Cookies and empanadas in Dilexit Nos: Food in the teachings of Pope Francis

“¡Have a nice lunch and see you!”; It is enough to listen to this phrase with which Pope Francis bids farewell to the faithful at the end of the Angelus each Sunday to sense the importance he gives to food.

There are several occasions on which the Holy Father has referred to food in a humorous tone. During a press conference returning from one of his Apostolic Journeys, he jokingly mentioned that his next destination would depend on the country’s gastronomy.

Always with a smile, when addressing the journalists who accompany him on his trips around the world, he usually also wishes them a good lunch. On his return from the city of Budapest Last year, he laughed as he wryly suggested that he wasn’t sure if there would be dinner on the plane “or something to trick the stomach.”

On that occasion, he also claimed that he had only understood two words of the Hungarian language: goulash (typical Hungarian dish made mainly with meat, onions, peppers and paprika) and tokay (characteristic wine of the country).

It has almost become a tradition that the popemobile stops in St. Peter’s Square when a pilgrim offers him one of the drinks he enjoys the most, mate. And “chipa”, a traditional food in some Latin American countries made from cassava starch and cheese, is also one of the foods that pleases Pope Francis the most. “Where is the chipa?” he asked during a meeting with Paraguayans in San Pedro.

On his trip to Luxembourg he stopped by a “surprise” at a cafeteria, he has even invited the owner of his favorite ice cream parlor to the Vatican, registerand we know that their favorite sweets are the brand’s Argentine alfajores The Nazarene. in the book The Vatican Cookbook, Published in 2014, the Holy Father also made reference to other recipes such as meat empanadas or mozzarella pizza with fainá.

His appreciation for food is so notable that leaders or prelates who visit him in the Vatican usually bring gifts that can be tasted. But without a doubt, his favorite dish, which he was able to enjoy with his family, on the occasion of his cousin Daniela di Tiglione’s 90th birthday, is the so-called Hot bath Well known in the Italian area of ​​Piedmont, it is usually prepared with anchovies, oil and garlic and used as a sauce for vegetables.

However, pleasure and enjoyment is not the only reason why the Holy Father has extolled the value of food and nutrition. Throughout his Pontificate, he has also given it a pastoral focus and highlighted its spiritual significance.

Without going any further, in his recent encyclical He loved usremembers that when he was a child, for carnival, “grandma made us cookies, and it was a very light dough, that dough she made was light.”

“Then I would put it in the oil and the dough would puff up, it would puff up and when we ate it it was hollow. Those cookies in the dialect were called ‘lies’. And it was precisely the grandmother who explained to us the reason for this: ‘These cookies are like lies, they seem big, but they have nothing inside, there is nothing true there; There is nothing of substance.’”

In the same document he states that “what no algorithm will be able to accommodate will be, for example, that moment of childhood that is tenderly remembered and that, even if the years pass, continues to occur in every corner of the planet.”

“I think about using the fork to seal the edges of those homemade dumplings that we make with our mothers or grandmothers. It is that moment of apprentice chef, halfway between play and adulthood, where the responsibility of work is assumed to help others,” writes the Holy Father.

The Italian theologian and bishop Mons. Bruno Forte explained that this encyclical “offers us the key to understanding the entire Magisterium” of Pope Francis. In this way, some reference to food could not be missing.

For the Holy Father, food is also a key element of human dignity. He has repeatedly advocated for a fair distribution of food. In fact, he has come to warn that disdaining food “is ripping it out of the hands” of the poor.

With them, the most needy, he shares a feast in the Vatican every year during the World Day of the Poor. Even in Rome there was a rumor that some nights, years ago, he distributed food incognito to the homeless people he found around San Pedro.

For the Holy Father, food also holds a meaning of brotherhood, even love. In your homily At the 2015 World Family Day in Philadelphia, the Holy Father noted that “faith opens the window to the active presence of the Spirit and shows us that, like happiness, holiness is always linked to small gestures.”

“They are minimal gestures that one learns at home; family gestures that are lost in the anonymity of everyday life but that make each day different. They are gestures of a mother, a grandmother, a father, a grandfather, a son, brothers. They are gestures of tenderness, affection, and compassion. They are gestures of the hot plate of those who wait for dinner, of the early breakfast of those who know how to accompany them to get up early. “They are gestures of home.”

However, the fundamental teaching of the Holy Father in relation to food is that which refers to the essential food, the Body of Christ: “Whoever receives with faith the Body and Blood of Christ not only eats, but is satisfied.” he said after the Angelus prayer in June 2022.

“Eating and being satisfied: these are fundamental needs that are answered in the Eucharist,” he stated.