Ten years ago, on a Shrove Tuesday like the one that is approaching, the then Pope Benedict XVI shook the Church with his unprecedented resignation from throne of peter. With his last strength, without prior rumors or palace intrigues, the German Pope brandished his thunderous resignation as the only gesture capable of illuminating a change, of opening a great transition.
Days later, on February 26, the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires traveled to Rome, as so many other times, with his brief suitcase and the black briefcase that he does not part with. He was to join the conclave with 114 other cardinal electors.
I fired him by telephone: “Pope Benedict with his resignation has put the Church in tune with such change that if the conclave responds to him on that frequency, the Pope who emerges from there will not let him return, he will want to have him close.” And I told him with deep conviction, not because I had a glimpse that he would be the chosen one.
Then came Benedict’s retreat to the summer house of the Popes and the decisive meetings of cardinals prior to the conclave during which Bergoglio excelled. Until the evening of that Wednesday, March 13, when he appeared on the balcony of San Pedro and the square and the world—Argentina in him—exploded in a single cry: Argentinian Pope!!!!
And in that indelible, historic moment, Bergoglio found the best way to communicate the change opened by Benedict’s thunderous resignation and initialed by the demands of the conclave, guidelines of his pontificate: “I come from the South, I am the Bishop of Rome, I will call myself Francisco, like the Poverello of Assisi, like the one whom Jesus asked to repair his Church”.
Ten years that particularly challenge Catholics and those who are not. Remembering that spiritual upheaval —or just euphoria?— is an opportunity for reflection and action. The Argentines contemporaries of Francisco, will we be in time to avoid the historical scandal of also making him the first Pope of the modern era who did not return to his Homeland? Or will we put all the blame on the shoulders of the cardinal who left ten years ago?
*By José Ignacio López, journalist.
by José Ignacio López*
