The Peruvian sculptor Raúl Franco presented the first bust of Pope Leo XIV and highlighted, in an interview with Ewtn News, that the pontiff’s smile “is linked to the tenderness of his gaze.”
On Sunday, June 29, in a ceremony held at the Cathedral of Lima in the presence of Cardinal Carlos Castillo, Archbishop of Lima and Primo del Perú, Raúl Franco presented the first bust of the first Peruvian and American Pope of the Catholic Church.
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The artist, who will soon turn 70, commented that the idea of sculpting the clay bust was created since he saw Pope Leo XIV appears on the balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro on May 8, something that raised him “a very big emotion, because he identifies with us.”
Franco, who has been an art teacher at the secondary and university level for 38 years, said that since he saw Leo XIV “appear as a potato and that he is excited by mentioning the city of Chiclayo, he has a face that caught my attention a lot of attention. A symmetry that is rare, but is a very attractive symmetry for sculpture.”
The Smile and Look of Leo XIV
Raúl Franco also said that the Pope “smiles as it looks, and looks as it smiles. There is a union. Very rarely it is seen in all people. In photography – you will have noticed in different events – people tell people to smile, and sometimes we open their mouths and our eyes are sad.”
But in Pope Leo XIV “there is a union. In that sense it is symmetrical. His lip expression of the smile is linked to the tenderness of his gaze.”
“That is the word, it is tender when looking. Being a man, you usually see those features in women, but he is saying that he is a kind man. A conclusion to which I arrive,” said the Peruvian artist.
A gift for Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican
When asked about whether the bust will be taken to the Vatican, Raúl Franco indicated that this is the idea: to make a bust that stays in Peru and that the other goes to Rome, perhaps between October and December; And that would be possible thanks to Cardinal Castillo. “They are friends, he told me himself. And with that confidence (the cardinal) he taught the photo (to the Pope), who has felt moved from being portrayed.”
The artist also stressed that art, and emotional themes, “help us to have a few more months of life, and perhaps if we have a condition, disappears. Positive emotions are very good.”
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.