We share this article written by María Luisa Berzosa González, Hijas de Jesus who has worked closely with Pope Francis and who has served as a consultant to the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
FROM SADNESS TO COMMITMENT WITH HOPE
Dear Brother Francis:
For some time now we have been accompanying you in your delicate state of health. We followed with great interest, not without emotion, each day of your stay at Gemelli Hospital, which became more and more familiar to us.
We celebrated with joy your return to your home Santa Marta, although we were attentive to your convalescence. We saw you by surprise in the usual places and we were able to listen to your messages during Holy Week. We received with a certain awe and reverence your last blessing Urbi et Orbi and your final ride in the Popemobile.
But now it is all in the past, something that seems like a dream, a difficult nightmare. But reality tells us that you are already gone and that you are resting and breathing to the in the loving arms of God the Father and Mother.
And with sadness in our hearts, we take on the commitment that you have left us as an inheritance. We know in our thoughts that one way to be grateful for the gift received is to make it grow and allow it to multiply. However, we would need to translate it from the head to the heart.
Your 12 years of Pontificate have left us with many doors open. We do not wish to close them, but on the contrary, to let no one be left out and to keep them all welcoming. You have left us a Church on the move, a field hospital which is merciful, compassionate, the opposite of the self-referential, a term you often used.
You have placed at the centre of your life and of the Church Jesus of Nazareth as the central point of reference for our faith and the Gospel as a program of life. And consequently, making a priority the attention to the human person especially to those who may find themselves wounded on the side of the road; discarded human beings wherever they are. For this reason, you have gone to the existential and geographical peripheries; you have chosen which countries to visit and which not to go to; nothing has been left to chance, but everything was assumed after the necessary processes of discernment.
You opened the way for us to walk together: synodality which assumes communion together with pluralism: a root which unites us, and which has a great variety of branches, leaves, flowers, fruits… A universal invitation to believers and unbelievers, to every person who wishes to offer their contribution for a church more coherent with God’s dream.
You listened to us women to continue to take steps towards a meaningful inclusion in positions of relevance because of the equal dignity we assumed in Baptism and of the pastoral urgency of the absence of priests.
We women are being recognized in the synodal church and we take the responsibility not to leave empty spaces, but to believe that we can contribute a lot and not to take steps backward but always forward.
There are so many areas in our world and therefore the church as an open and a broad horizon must continue walking in spite of such a burden. We have learned from your testimony to put our life in God’s hands, to let ourselves be led by the Spirit to be able to listen to the cries and silences of our world.
And how can we not listen to the urgent cry of our ‘common home’, the extreme violence of so many wars, the desperate plight of so many migrants. We must take responsibility, ask forgiveness and offer reparation to so many victims of abuses of all kinds in our church which is great problem that you have denounced so strongly in your gestures and words.
And you have departed the Jubilee Year as it unfolds as a Pilgrim of Hope and which at the moment of Resurrection to rejoice life to the full.
I reiterate this transition that fills my heart with hope, from sorrow to commitment; while the news allows us to see you in St. Peter’s Basilica once again, before being transferred definitively to that place so often visited by you – the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore with your dear Mother Salus Populi Romani.
The word ‘thank you’ is too limited for me. I feel infinite gratitude for having shared such a close and personal relationship with you during the Synod. We were able to talk deep issues and also to engage many moments of joy and good humour which you never lacked, although you were always very much aware of the conflicts, tensions and resistance around you in your way of ‘shepherding.’
Brother Francis, rest and rejoice in your Lord!
Many thanks for your life offered in total self-giving!
María Luisa Berzosa González
Hijas de Jesus – Rome
