01-04-2013 - Traces, n. 4

FROM ARGENTINA
The story of a
“simple priest”

by Silvina Premat
Journalist at La Nación, of Buenos Aires


“Please, continue calling me Fr. Jorge,” Jorge Mario Bergoglio asked the secretary who answered the phone at the archdiocesan offices in Buenos Aires, which, up to just two weeks ago, he had been directing. The day after his election, she didn’t know how to address him: Your Holiness Francis, Holy Father, Monsignor... Up to the moment he went out on the Balcony of Blessings at Saint Peter’s, now the Vicar of Christ, this “Fr. Jorge” had done everything possible to live “like a simple priest,” even during the six years he guided the Argentinean Bishop’s Conference, and notwithstanding his important activity among the Latin American bishops, and the fact of being the second-most-voted cardinal in the 2005 conclave.
But he did not pass unobserved, perhaps because he was the head of the archdiocese of the capital of Argentina, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction with the most faithful–two and a half million–where what happens has repercussions throughout the country. This may be because one could not remain indifferent to his homilies, generally brief and direct. Cardinal Bergoglio had very significant public exposure, because of his responsibilities in the government of the Church in Argentina and because of the many times, during Mass and in front of the national media, he had denounced situations that violated the dignity of any human person, such as the trafficking of women, sexual exploitation of children, slave-like labor, drug sales to adolescents at the school exits, abandonment of the elderly, marginalization of immigrants, and conditions of extreme poverty... But the cornerstone of all his words and his pastoral activity was not social condemnation; it was the Christian announcement. Certainly, this is the opinion of those who listened to him personally or read his homilies or his messages. The others had an image of him that remained half-informed. Why? Because they didn’t know his daily activities and listened to the major means of communication, which reported his public words only when they touched political interests and conflicted with some action of the regional or national government.
This may be why there are so many people, even among Argentinean Catholics, who are discovering with the rest of the word a “Fr. Jorge” they hadn’t known.
On the other hand, the normal people are not surprised by the “style” of Pope Francis. “This attitude isn’t due to the fact that now he’s in the Vatican. He was the same here in Buenos Aires,” say the faithful of simple heart.
The Archbishop of Buenos Aires lived alone in the austere building of the city curia, next to the metropolitan cathedral and in front of the Plaza de Mayo, the nerve center of Argentinean political power. “Aren’t you too alone? You’re not a hermit monk,” I once said to him. He answered, “I’m not alone; I have the Blessed Sacrament!”
Even though three nuns took care of the domestic work in his apartment, he often prepared a tea for himself or something to eat. He generally got up before 5 am and received people in audience from 8 am to 6 pm. He took a break for lunch, between 12 and 1, and then he had to meet with the bishops or priests, or had other commitments. The doors closed at 7 pm, and at that point, unless he went to say a Mass somewhere or participated in some event, nobody saw him again until the next morning.
Sometimes, not very often, he accepted a dinner invitation or invited a priest or someone who came to visit him to his home or to a restaurant. It was very rare to see him in government or political ceremonies. However, he encouraged laypeople to participate in politics and to take on responsibilities. One of the non-religious activities he participated in more often was the presentation of books by some rabbi, priest, or writer for whom he had also written the introduction. In these cases, during the presentation he read his text.

The “slow line.” He gave high priority to taking care of the priests of the archdiocese, and tried to be present at the festivities for the patron saints of their parishes. He received in private audience anyone who asked. He often personally called those who had asked to see him and set up the appointment himself, or had the conversation on the phone. He found the time to receive everyone in the same way.
As Archbishop, he furthered the relationship of independence between Church and State that Cardinal Stanislao Karlic had begun. In 15 years, he had nine presidents as neighbors at the Casa Rosada, and with all of them he maintained a respectful but not complaisant relationship, with moments of high tension during the term of Néstor Kirchner. He crossed the square that separated him from the country’s seat of executive power only when strictly necessary–very few times.
In terms of pastoral policy, he set the archdiocese of Buenos Aires in what he defined “a permanent state of assembly.” This meant resuming the old habit of the Via Crucis, the processions through the streets of the neighborhoods, and the living nativity scenes in the squares or other public spaces. He promoted the installation of big tents in places with high concentrations of workers, like the Obelisk in the city center, or in Constitución Square, where a million people pass by every day. In these tents, some priests or seminarians blessed whoever asked them, and noted Masses for Baptisms or for the repose of the souls of loved ones. In sum, he supported whatever initiative would mean “bringing the Church to the streets,” approaching people in their environment and living what especially in Latin America is popular devotion. For celebrations for great numbers of people, such as for the great liturgical feasts, he normally wrote the homily a few days or even weeks in advance. For the Masses in the neighborhoods, he improvised. Whichever way, however, whether he read or not, he never lost his colloquial tone and presented his listeners with simple questions that helped them reflect on their lives in relationship to the Gospel.
He was particularly fond of two expressions of popular devotion typical of Buenos Aires: the youth pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Virgen de Luján, about 40 miles from the capital, and the celebration of the Feast of San Cayetano, considered the patron of bread and work, in the densely populated neighborhood of Liniers. In Luján he received the pilgrims who had walked 10 hours to get there, inviting them in various ways to always look at the maternal love of the Virgin and to let themselves be loved by her and her Son. At the San Cayetano celebration, his presence was acclaimed by the devout who participated in the big Mass celebrated on the morning of the feast day, August 7th. After the celebration of the Eucharist, the Cardinal walked from the front to the back of the two lines the pilgrims formed in front of the sanctuary, and that generally extend about a mile. One of the lines was considered “fast,” because it allowed the faithful to see the image of the saint from a distance of six feet; the other is known as the “slow line,” because it enables them to touch the case that contains the image of the saint, which they consider miraculous.

“My faith is nurtured by theirs.” Bergoglio took almost three hours to walk along these lines, greeting each person who asked him for a blessing; they looked at him and treated him as if he were already the Pope. “Why do you spend so much time going through these lines of pilgrims?” a priest once asked him. “Because my faith is nurtured by theirs,” he answered. Perhaps this is the reason for his frequent visits to the parishes and chapels of the priests who live in the villas miseria, neighborhoods of the city of Buenos Aires that formed where there were dumps or unused public spaces. Ever since the beginning of his ministry as archbishop, Bergoglio has strengthened the presence of the Church in the villas around the capital, where now about 250,000 people live, having come from the interior of the country or other Latin American countries. Back in 1969, there was already a team of priests for this mega-shantytown; when Bergoglio was nominated archbishop in 1998, the team had just 6 or 7 priests, but today it has more than 20 priests.
Bergoglio has taken upon himself the work of these priests and also the death threat that Fr. José María “Pepe” Di Paola, the coordinator of the team, received in April 2009. According to Bergoglio, Fr. Di Paola is one of the men he most listens to. Bergoglio publicly denounced this threat, and in August of that year created an episcopal vicariate for the villas miseria and nominated Fr. Di Paola, who lived in one of the villas Bergoglio visited most often, as vicar.
There are many testimonies of families who have received Bergoglio in their humble homes in these villas and who now are proud to know the Holy Father and to have received from his hands the sacrament of Confirmation. Often, the Cardinal accepted invitations to remain at lunch in these precarious little houses. Once, a few months ago, he told the family that served him a simple dish of pasta: “I like to sit at table with the poor because they serve lunch and share their hearts. At times, those who have more, share only the lunch.”
He had a personal relationship with a great number of people who lived in unstable situations and he knew their private stories perfectly. He involved himself with the members of the NGOs that worked in difficult fields such as human trafficking, slavery-like work practices, and prostitution of minors. He took interest in each person and tried to help her or him; he accompanied and consoled the victims of these injustices. He often went to visit the veterans of the Faulkland Islands war who, for five years, have camped in the middle of Plaza de Mayo, in front of the archbishop’s building, to ask the government for official recognition. “The Cardinal came to speak with us and brought us cookies, and when he couldn’t come he had someone else bring them,” one of these veterans told me one day.
It is said that in the years before becoming Archbishop he secretly helped those politically persecuted by the Argentinean regime, which massacred so many of its citizens. Perhaps precisely this style is the thing that worldly logic cannot comprehend.
“From the heart of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Pope saw that, in Saint Francis, he found a very great inspiration to help the poor... All the saints would like to imitate other saints, because of many of their qualities,” a friend of Bergoglio, Cardinal Karlic, said recently. He confided that the new Pope is “a man of thought, who decants his wisdom into the management of things,” and who “is capable of facing the simplest things and the most complicated ones.” He will be so in Rome, too.