Our Editorial Director, Andrea Tornielli, displays on the initiative for a number of individuals from the margins of society to welcome Pope Francis’ mortal stays to their everlasting resting place on the Basilica of St. Mary Main.
By Andrea Tornielli
The “final” would be the final to welcome him, as they wait on the brink of the Basilica of St. Mary Main, the place Pope Francis will probably be buried beneath the maternal gaze of the icon of the Salus Populi Romani.
The ultimate stretch of the earthly path of the Bishop of Rome, who got here virtually from the “ends of the earth,” will probably be topped not by the highly effective however by these poor, migrants, homeless, and marginalized, briefly, those that have been the main focus of so many pages of his magisterium and who’re on the centre of each web page of the Gospel.
Already on Easter Monday, the Monday of the Angel, the phrases pronounced by Cardinal Camerlengo Kevin Joseph Farrell to announce the surprising loss of life of Pope Francis had underlined this cornerstone of his instructing: “He taught us to dwell the values of the Gospel with constancy, braveness, and common love, particularly in favour of the poorest and most marginalized.”
“How I would really like a Church which is poor and for the poor!” Pope Francis stated in the beginning of his hold forth in 2013. “For the Church, the choice for the poor is primarily a theological class reasonably than a cultural, sociological, political, or philosophical one. God reveals the poor ‘His first mercy.’ This divine desire has penalties for the religion lifetime of all Christians, since we’re known as to have ‘this thoughts… which was in Jesus Christ’,” he wrote within the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, a doc that we’ve but to completely admire and that marked the trajectory of his ministry as Successor of Peter.
Pope Francis’ phrases had been at all times accompanied by concrete actions and selections. The primary Pope to decide on the title of the saint of Assisi adopted within the wake of the teachings of his predecessors, similar to these of Pope St. John XXIII, who, a month earlier than opening the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, had stated, “The Church presents herself as she is and desires to be, because the Church of all, and significantly the Church of the poor.”
For the primary South American Pope, his magisterium of phrases and actions had its origin within the Gospel and the teachings of the early Church Fathers—like Saint Ambrose, who had stated, “It’s not of your possessions that you simply make a present to the poor; you do not more than render to him what belongs to him. For it’s that which is given in widespread for the usage of all, that which you annex. The earth is given to all, and never solely to the wealthy.”
With these phrases, Pope St. Paul VI was in a position to affirm in his encyclical Populorum progressio that personal property doesn’t represent an unconditional and absolute proper for anybody, and that nobody is permitted to order for his personal unique use what exceeds his want when others lack the requirements.
His teachings additionally recalled St. John Chrysostom, who stated in a well-known homily, “Do you wish to honour the physique of Christ? Don’t permit it to be an object of contempt in its members, that’s, within the poor, disadvantaged of garments to cowl themselves. Don’t honour Christ right here in church with silk cloths, whereas exterior you neglect Him when he suffers from chilly and nakedness. He who stated: That is My Physique, stated additionally: ‘You noticed Me hungry and didn’t give Me meals’.”
Removed from ideological readings, the Church has no political pursuits to defend when it requires overcoming what Pope Francis known as “the globalization of indifference.”
Moved solely by the phrases of the Gospel, sustained by the custom of the Fathers of the Church, the late Pope invited us to show our gaze to those that are “final,” these favoured by Jesus—these “final ones” who will accompany him on Saturday with their embrace on the ultimate stage of his journey.
