Pope Francis leaves us a great love that we are obliged to replicate: this is remembered by an Argentine friend

A week after Pope Francis’s departure on Monday, April 21, one of his closest Argentine friends remembers him with gratitude. He ensures that his legacy is impossible to minimize: “He leaves us a great love, that we are obliged to replicate.”

“I feel that his legacy will be impressive, and will be recognized in the coming years,” said Aci Press, Marcelo Pivato, a retired teacher of Buenos Aires who shared more than two decades of close relationship with Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Pivato met him in 1999 when he worked at the Ministry of Education. From that first encounter, his simplicity hit him: “He was affable, sympathetic, and he wanted to see him as a brother.”

From those years rescue his coherence of life. Even as Archbishop, Bergoglio insisted on moving in a subway or collective, and that same attitude kept it in Rome: “He could simply expand what he already did as a priest and bishop, always living with the same humility and closeness.”

Over the years, that friendship became more deep: “For me it was the protection that my father could have given me. It is incomparable with anyone,” he recalls.

With a serene voice, Pivato recalls that it was Bergoglio himself who testified to justice for the adoption of his only son, José Luis, whom years later he would baptize personally. Being Pope, he would give him the first communion in Santa Marta.

“We did the procedures as everyone does, but he took the job of talking with judges, magistrates,” he recalled with joy.

After taking his newborn son home, Pivato received a congratulations call from Bergoglio, with whom he agreed that on October 23, 2004 he would celebrate baptism in the Parish Child Jesus. “It was the happiest moment of my life,” Pivato confessed, and recalled that the protagonist of that joy was his great friend Jorge Mario.

Francisco’s legacy

But beyond personal gestures, Marcelo highlights the universal heritage that Francisco leaves: “I think the greatest legacy is that he He appeared not as a king, but as a man he recognized as a sinner. His line was always the same: the option for the poor, by the invisibles, their humility and their austerity. ”

In their last meetings – the last in June 2024 – spoke for a long time about life, faith and the sense of suffering. “I told him the idea we had with my wife to carry out a foundation that attended pregnant mothers in vulnerability, and he told me: ‘Do it, do it.’ He was a man of action.”

Francisco was, according to Marcelo, a leader who did not turn away from his essence: “He did not change. He managed to be with a king or the most humble people, and it was the same. He did not get above one. He was next to him.”

That coherence, he says, was the same in Buenos Aires and in Rome. “In the archipelago of Buenos Aires he acted in the same way that he acted in Rome. He wanted to collaborate. And Argentina may now understand it, not to deepen the famous crack in citizenship,” he said referring to the extreme political and social polarization that his country lives.

When asked what the Pope leaves to those who are not Catholics, Pivato does not hesitate: “He has marked what he said: ‘All together, the All brothers‘. Maybe your teachings help us soften our hearts. “

“There are still many sheets of the book to read. And one of the great achievements is to open the Church to all”, He says.

On the last stage of his life, in which Francisco confronted bilateral pneumonia and asthmatic bronchitis, Marcelo says that “he wanted to give life to the end. He self -defined as a bad patient, because he did not want to stop doing things. But I think he put everything in the hands of God.”

“He has gone with a lot of peace, and I think that many people who saw him with an eye and a small heart, today he is learning to see him with the eyes and heart of the world, say: to see him in his true value,” he says.

About the criticism of Francisco’s pontificate

Pivato also referred to the criticisms that Pope Francis received during his pontificate, especially from some sectors of the Church: “Well, the Church has – like every institution – its different variants. Then, it is logical that there are criticisms. And it is also logical that these criticisms are accentuated in A Pope who came to break, somehow, many models”.

However, he said that his friend Bergoglio “was never against the Gospel, against Jesus’ teachings or against what the Bible says.”

That is why the figure of Francisco will be more valued over time: “Maybe – as many times with the heroes of history – over time the work is recognized more, or those who were against understanding that it was not to be so much against.” Although he also admitted that “there will be those who, in very, conservative lines, think that no, that the Church has not done well.”

Some final memories

In one of the most shocking anecdotes, Marcelo recalls that, during the government of President Carlos Menem, Bergoglio was warned by the intelligence services of a possible attack during the Corpus Christi procession in the Plaza de Mayo.

“They asked him to wear bulletproof vest, but he refused,” says Pivato. He finally agreed, pressed by the authorities, but not without discomfort. Pivato remembers that Francisco, when he returned, withdrew the vest with a lot of annoyance, and said: ‘I will never put a bulletproof vest, because If John Paul II attacked him and God protected him … he will also protect me. ”

For pivato, that attitude summarizes its essence: “always humility ahead.” And remember that, even as a Pope, he traveled without fear of high -risk areas, such as Middle East or Africa, despite the reports of possible attacks.

“It was not just the good Pope and the Pope of the poor. He was a Pope who encouraged to have hope. Maybe we now have the misfortune that he has left, but the opportunity to see him with the eyes of the world, especially the marginalized,” he said.

At the end of the conversation, Marcelo confesses: “My family always considered him part of the family. God wanted her to be Pope, but for us it was one of us. He leaves us a great love, that we are obliged to replicate.”