During his more than 12 years of pontificate, Pope Francis shared on several occasions his devotion and his spiritual closeness with several saints, such as San José and Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús.
1. San José
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The devotion that Pope Francis had to San José had its greatest expression with the year of San José, which summoned to be held from December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021.
This year Francisco convened through the Apostolic Charter Father’s heart (Father’s Heart), to commemorate the 150 years of the Quemadmodum Deus Decree, with which Blessed Pío IX declared San José Patrono of the Universal Church.
Another sample of his great love and spiritual friendship with the Holy Custodian of the Nazareth family was his love for the image of San José sleeping, which he helped make more popular.
“I love San José very much, because he is a strong and silent man and in my desk I have an image of San José sleeping and sleeping takes care of the church. Yes, he can do it, we know it. And when I have a problem, a difficulty, I write a piece of paper and put it under San José, so that I dream it. This means to pose for that problem”Said Pope Francis in the Philippines on January 16, 2015.
2. Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús
As with San José, Pope Francis put in writing his great love and spiritual friendship for her in an apostolic exhortation entitled These’t confidence (It is trust) On the confidence in the merciful love of God, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the saint.
Santa Teresa del Niño Jesús or Santa Teresita de Lisieux was a religious Carmelite Barefoot French. He was born in the city of Alençon on January 2, 1873. He died in 1897, when he was only 24 years old. It was declared Santa in 1925 by Pope Pius XI and proclaimed “Doctor of the Church” on October 19, 1997 by San Juan Pablo II.
On the flight that took him from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, on January 15, 2015, the Pope said: “When I don’t know how things are, I have the habit of asking Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús who, if she deals with a problem, of an issue, of an issue, I send me a rose, and it doessometimes, but strangely. ”
“And I also asked for it for this trip, that she took care of and sent me a rose, but instead of a rose, you have come to greet me. Thanks to Carolina, thanks to Teresita and thanks to you,” he said later, in reference to the silver image of the saint in low relief given by the Paris Match journalist, the French Caroline Pigozzi.
3. San Francisco de Asís
On March 16, 2013, at an audience with about six thousand journalists in the Vatican, the Pope explained that he chose the name for San Francisco de Asís, after Cardinal Hummes asked him, already chosen pontiff, who does not forget the poor.
“And so, the name has entered my heart: Francisco de Asís. For me it is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and custodes creation; at this time, we also maintain with creation a not -so -good relationship, isn’t it the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man … Ah, how a poor church would like and for the poor!
Francisco visited Assisi on several occasions, being the first in October 2013 and the last in September 2022, on the occasion of the meeting “The economy of Francisco”.
Your second encyclical Laudato yes‘, On the care of the common house, it takes its name, as the same document indicates of the phrase “Alabado Seas, my lord” of San Francisco de Asís.
“In that beautiful song it reminded us that our common house is also like a sister, with whom we share existence, and as a beautiful mother who welcomes us in her arms,” says Pope Francis at the beginning of October 2015.
His third encyclical All brothers (“All brothers”), published in 2020 about fraternity and social friendship, also begins by proposing San Francisco de Asís as a model to live all as brothers.
4. St. Ignacio of Loyola
On multiple occasions Pope Francis expressed his closeness and devotion to the Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus, order to which he belonged and that allowed him to become the first Jesuit Pope in history.
Of his spirituality, the Argentine Pope often highlighted the importance of spiritual exercises, as in the prologue he wrote in 2023 For the book of Austen Ivereight, entitled “First belong to God: In Retiro with Pope Francis.”
There the Holy Father affirms that “Love and Service: they are the two axes of spiritual exercises. Jesus goes out to meet our chains so that we walk next to him, like his disciples and companions.”
In 2021, and on the occasion of the Ignatian year that commemorated the 500 years of the conversion of San Ignacio, the Pope published a video message in which he highlighted the importance of discernment, one of his papacy’s accents.
“The discernment does not always be to hit from the beginning, but in navigating, in having a compass to be able to undertake the path that has many curves and turns, but always be guided by the Holy Spirit, which is leading us to meet the Lord,” he said then.
5. Don Bosco
Don Bosco or San Juan Bosco, the Italian saint founder of the Salesians, influenced Pope Francis since his childhood.
Pope Francis’s spiritual connection with Don Bosco begins with his baptism, since he received the sacrament in Buenos Aires, in 1936, from the hands of the Salesian priest Enrico Pozzoli.
David Franco Córdova, historian of the Salesian Congregation of Peru, explains that Fr. Pozzoli – who in a letter dated in 1990 Pope Francis defined as “The spiritual father of the family ”Bergoglio– It was the one who managed the entrance of Jorge Mario and his second brother, Óscar Adrián, as internal students at the Salesiano de Ramos Mejía school in Buenos Aires.
It was also Pozzoli who in 1955 talked with Jorge Mario’s parents and was convincing them to accept the priestly vocation of the future Pope.
In June 2015when visiting Turin for the 200 years of the birth of Don Bosco, Pope Francis stressed that the Turin Saint “fulfilled his priestly mission to his last sigh, sustained by unwavering confidence in God and his love, for which he did great things. This relationship of trust with the Lord is also the essence of consecrated life”.
January 26, 2019in the vigil with the young people of the JMI of Panama, Francisco put Don Bosco as an example of knowing how to look at young people with the eyes of God.
“Don Bosco did not look for young people anywhere distant or special, he simply learned to look, to see everything that happened around him in the city with the eyes of God and, thus, his heart was beaten by hundreds of children, of abandoned young people without study, without work and without the friend of a community,” he said.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.