It is with deep emotion that I write these lines about Pope Francis after his “flight” to the Father. I recall those many thoughtful and meaningful moments, when I was able to shake his hand and feel the warmth of his smile, the tenderness of his gaze, the strength of his words, the beating of his heart ready for a fatherly welcome. And I find it hard to believe that these encounters will no longer have a “tomorrow” or an “again” in my life.

I do not propose to make a thematic summary of Francis’ pontificate. To this end, it will be enough to review the many articles that have been published in recent days, especially the special issue of L’Osservatore Romano – just a few hours after his death – and the more or less exhaustive evaluations that will surely be published in the near future.

What moves me from within is to find that the golden thread that weaves his mission in guiding the Church, to try to be in tune with the centre of his heart and soul. And, from there, to relive the relationship he had with the Work of Mary during these twelve years.

To do this, I meditated deeply on his most recent talks, because I feel that this is where Pope Francis gave the best of himself and where you can find the key to all his thinking and to all his actions.

In the text he prepared for the Easter Mass, there is a quote from the great French theologian Henri de Lubac, who is also a Jesuit, that cannot simply be rhetorical: “it should be enough to understand this: Christianity is Christ. No, truly, there is nothing else but this.”

In my opinion, if we want to understand Francis, we must refer to this absolute: Christ, and only Christ, all Christ. From this we can understand the profound content of his encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, the choice of his journeys, his preferred options, the meaning of the reforms he undertook, his gestures, his words, his homilies, his meetings, and above all his love for those who are excluded, for those who are rejected, for women, for the elderly, for children and for creation.

‘No, there really is nothing else’. That is why one can say – using a pleonasm – that the Catholicism of Pope Francis is simply a “Christian Catholicism”. The new impulse he wanted to give the Church is based on this approach: the transparency of Christ. Because of this, on many occasions he has gone far beyond the politically correct, or rather, the ecclesially correct, without fear of being misunderstood, and without fear of being wrong, even aware of his “contradictions”. In fact, in an interview with a Spanish newspaper he said that what he wished for his successor was not to make his same mistakes.

Because of this Christological centrality, we can acknowledge that we have indeed been living – almost without realising it – with a Pope who is profoundly mystical. After all, this is how Pope Francis has thought and lived the Church: not as a religious organisation, nor as a distributor of sacraments, much less as a centre of economic, social or political power, but as the people of God, the body of Christ, which gives hospitality to humanity in His humanity. A Church, therefore, that is open to humanity, to service, because Jesus is “the heart of the world”.

To reduce Francis to a social reformer or a Pope of disruption shows a tremendous blindness. I often stared at his face when he inserted comments in his messages, for example at the Sunday Angelus. There, with the simplicity of a shepherd who passionately loves his flock, he displayed his harmony with the divine, his wisdom, his crystal-clear and straightforward faith, his profound humility.

In my humble opinion, from the centrality of Christ derive the two fundamental pillars of his magisterium: mercy and hope. Mercy is the expression of knowing ourselves as believers rooted in history, both personal and collective, with all its tragedies; hope manifests the eschatological and salvific tension that determines it. According to the Pope’s thought, there is mercy because there is hope; and it is hope that gives us a heart of mercy. Indeed, in his homily prepared for this year’s Easter Vigil, Francis affirms that ‘the Risen Christ is the definitive turning point in human history’. The important social and ecological messages of Pope Francis are misunderstood if this eschatological tension centred on the Risen Lord is not taken into account.

Francis’ relationship with the Focolare Movement has been very deep during the twelve years of his pontificate. He addressed ten official speeches to it: to the participants at the 2014 and 2021 Assemblies; to all those belonging to the Movement on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of its birth; to the academic community of the Sophia University Institute; to the family focolares; to the participants at the meeting of the bishops of various Churches; to the participants at the meeting on the “economy of communion”; to the participants at the interreligious conference “One Human Family”; to the citizens of the little town of Loppiano; to the Mariapolis of Rome – Earth Village. Furthermore, on one occasion, he granted a private audience to Maria Voce, the first president of the Work of Mary after Chiara, and to myself.

What emerges from these meetings is a great love and a touching pastoral concern of Pope Francis for the Movement. In the virtual ecclesial circularity between hierarchical and charismatic gifts, we can affirm that, on the one hand, the Pope has been able to grasp, value and highlight the gift that the charism of unity, with its emphasis on the spirituality of communion and its concrete achievements in very different ecclesial and civic contexts, represents for the synodal process that the whole Church is living in view of a new evangelisation. On the other hand, he has identified with extreme clarity the challenges and steps that the movement must necessarily take if it wants to remain faithful to its original charism, knowing how to go through the inevitable post-foundation crisis in a humble way, transforming it into a time of grace and new opportunities.

Pope Francis has been for the world an all-encompassing message of fraternity rooted in Christ and open to all. Fraternity is the only future that is possible. We, the people of unity, must treasure this legacy with humility, energy and responsibility.

Jesús Morán

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