Letters from readers II: Ten years of Francis

The emotion we felt when we learned that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected Pope of the Catholic Church still resonates. It was a collective feeling full of hope, a heartbeat that united us in improvised talks, spontaneous laughter, in fortuitous dialogues in which the common denominator was that a Latin American pope, an Argentine pope, had entered the history of the church in a amazing. He was ours, and he allowed us to enjoy the election as a way of universalizing this lagging part of the world. The fact that he was elected Pope made us visible and helped us feel that evangelical thing according to which the last will possibly be the first. 10 years after this unforgettable March 13, I want to express my deep affection for who has made the Catholic Church a place other than a closed and hermetic physical space. After Francis and his passage through the Church, we once again believed in the austerity of the first disciples, in the women who accompanied the Master on his itineraries, in love and predilection for the excluded, in a Gospel that is torn apart in the framework of a world with insurmountable wars, climatic catastrophes arising from the misuse of our common home and societies where opulence and misery coexist. My deep tribute to those who emphasized interreligious dialogue, inclusion, Franciscan austerity; misunderstood, beaten and persecuted, he still stands and shines. Let the words of Christ resound in your ears: “Do not be afraid, I have overcome the world.”