Papa Francisco: A Dad with his Family

by Sarah-Leah Pimentel · December 7, 2014

Pope Francis greets a child before a special audience for members of the Schoenstatt religious movement. (Photo: Max Rossi, Reuters/CNS)

Nowhere can one see the results of the faith the size of a mustard seed better than in Rome. Today the Vatican is the heart of the universal Church.

A walk through the Roman ruins, however, reminds us that this is also the city where just under 2000 years ago, one of Christ’s most faithful disciples, Peter, was martyred. A simple fisherman who denied Jesus three times. This impetuous man whose faith often faltered was precisely the one to whom Jesus entrusted the Church. The same man in whose footsteps two millennia’s worth of popes have walked. The man in whose footsteps Pope Francis walks today.

On October 26, the Schoenstatt movement had an audience with Pope Francis, marking the final high point of the apostolic movement’s centenary celebrations which had started in Schoenstatt, Germany, the week before.

As thousands of us lined up outside St Peter’s Square to make our way into Paul VI Hall, the excitement was palpable. We were going to meet the pope! We all tried to imagine what it would be like when the pope would address us, bless us and send us out to continue our apostolic mission. We were going to meet a great man! But it all played out so differently

In Portuguese the word for Pope is Papa. The affectionate word for dad is papa. It’s the most appropriate word I can find to describe Pope Francis. Dad. A dad who walks with his family.

From the minute he walked into the audience hall, the first thing that struck me is that he wasn’t in a rush to get to the podium. He really took his time to walk slowly through the crowd and speak with individual people.

Some of our South African group were really close to the guard rail. He paused in front one of the older members of our group and took time to greet her, allow her to kiss his hands. He stopped when saw a young man from New Zealand and laughed, showing his appreciation for the stuffed kiwi that he was carrying to represent his country. This was a dad having a quiet chat with his family members before the start of a family celebration.

My eyes followed him as he came closer to where I was standing. I was most touched by the joy that seemed to radiate outwards from somewhere deep inside of him.

We are so used to seeing world leaders paste on a smile for the cameras as they shake people’s hands and hold babies. Something about Pope Francis made me certain that this was not an act for the media. He looked genuinely happy and seemed as excited to meet us as we were to meet him.

As soon as he opened his mouth to speak with us, he did something else that made many of us feel even more at home with him. He spoke in his native Spanish. At least 70% of the crowd were native Spanish speakers, so it really felt like he was a dad speaking with his family.

He was completely relaxed, so much so that he barely glanced at his pre-prepared text, and just spoke from the heart, regularly making use of very typical expression from Buenos Aires.

And speak he did. Someone told us that he’d give us no more than 40 minutes because the Holy Father always has his lunch at 1pm. At 1:20 we were still there, and when the president of the Schoenstatt general presidium tried to hurry things along so that Pope Francis wouldn’t miss his lunch, the pope just laughed and joked that he’d never met a member of the clergy who’d died of starvation!

His casual jokes, however, were also a form of practical education, gentle and caring, but also challenging. Speaking about family and why many young men seemed reluctant to marry, he suggested that mothers stop ironing their shirts!

At another point, while speaking about Christians who barely seem to acknowledge Mary as our mother or the mother of the Church, he said that if we don’t want her as a mother, then we’ll have her as a mother-in-law!

At the very end, when Pope Francis blessed us, he thanked us for visiting him. We should have been the ones to thank him for giving his time and sharing his wisdom with us. And yet, he thanked us for coming to see him. What humility, what tenderness and love!

It truly was a wonderful afternoon we spent with our spiritual dad, Pope Francis, Papa Francisco.