{"id":287863,"date":"2025-04-22T19:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T19:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/at-the-popes-hospital-francis-was-a-calming-and-mischievous-presence\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T19:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T19:43:09","slug":"at-the-popes-hospital-francis-was-a-calming-and-mischievous-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/at-the-popes-hospital-francis-was-a-calming-and-mischievous-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"At the pope\u2019s hospital, Francis was a calming and mischievous presence."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"At<\/div>


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I remember the people. Thousands of them, sometimes hundreds of thousands, pressed together in aging stadiums, lining the streets of one place or another.<\/p>\n

In the Mexican state of Chiapas, so many people crowded in a local stadium in 2016 that it seemed to heave from the human swarm, everyone craning upward, squinting at the cloudless sky, as a helicopter slowly descended into clouds of dust, bearing Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

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Earlier, in Morelia, it didn\u2019t matter that Francis was running late. A band played. Nuns waved pompoms. Priests and seminarians formed a conga line, hands on shoulders, knees pumping, punching the air and dancing until Francis appeared.<\/p>\n

From the moment he became an unexpected pope on a rainy night in Vatican City in 2013, Francis centered his papacy on what he called \u201cthe peripheries,\u201d the places forgotten in a supposedly interconnected, globalized world. He talked about people \u201con the margins,\u201d about immigrants and the poor, and when he traveled the globe, he always found them, and they found him.<\/p>\n

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A marching band of Mexican nuns playing their instruments as they spontaneously parade on the eve of Pope Francis\u2019 arrival to Morelia in 2016.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Rebecca Blackwell\/Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Any pope can draw a crowd, but Francis had something intangible. He wasn\u2019t an especially riveting speaker yet his sheer presence captured people.<\/p>\n

In Paraguay in 2015, thousands of poor people waved homemade signs as the papal motorcade pushed through the capital of Asunci\u00f3n toward yet another teeming outdoor Mass. There was none of the gilded opulence of the Vatican. A local artist had decorated the altar with 32,000 corncobs and 200,000 baby coconuts, pumpkins, gourds and seeds. (Vatican radio described it as a vegetable masterpiece.)<\/p>\n

I covered the early years of Francis\u2019 papacy, including his first trips to Latin America, Greece, the United States and the Caucasus, and on that expectant first night in Vatican City, I stood in the rain with two Roman priests. A funnel of white smoke had sent the Rev. Adriano Furgoni and the Rev. Maurizio Piscola into the gathering crowds beneath St. Peter\u2019s Basilica, everyone waiting to see who emerged onto the balcony as pope.<\/p>\n

The two priests were rooting for Christoph Sch\u00f6nborn, a progressive Austrian cardinal, and when the announcement of the new pontiff finally came, it was instead an Argentine named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was taking the name of Francis. You could hear a gasp in the great square, then a confused silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know him,\u201d Father Piscola told me.<\/p>\n

Father Furgoni said, \u201cHe has a reputation as a very tough man.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pilgrims at St. Peter\u2019s Square in Vatican City watching a giant screen showing a Mass being held in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica in March 2013, one day before Francis\u2019 selection as pope.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Peter Macdiarmid\/Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Pope Francis appeared on the balcony of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica on March 13, 2013, after being elected by the conclave of cardinals.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Vincenzo Pinto\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Francis stepped through red curtains onto the balcony and looked out on the crowd. He was silent for a moment, maybe a little startled, then greeted his new followers with a simple \u201cbuona sera,\u201d or good evening. He told a joke about how his fellow cardinals had gone to the end of the world to find a new pope. And then he asked everyone to pray for him.<\/p>\n

His quiet informality seemed to carry an electric current, charging the wet air with an unexpected alchemy. People began singing and swaying.<\/p>\n

\u201cViva il papa!\u201d a man in the crowd shouted. Others began cheering, \u201cFrancesco! Francesco!\u201d<\/p>\n

My two skeptical priests were among the converted. An unknown pope had used a few simple words and gestures to win them over. They had not gotten the pope they hoped for, but now said they had the pope they wanted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect big changes,\u201d Father Furgoni said. \u201cI\u2019m really moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is already much discussion and debate about Francis\u2019 legacy. His death comes as his political worldview is under siege. His enemies thought he tried to change the Roman Catholic Church too much; some of his supporters thought he did too little. He was never just the gentle grandfatherly man who charmed the world on that rainy first night; he could be steely and ruthless, too.<\/p>\n

But as the cardinals return to the Vatican in the coming weeks to pick his successor, Francis will always be remembered for that alchemy that could charge the wet air. He made it a point to always go to the forgotten places, to find the forgotten people, so that they could find him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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I remember the people. Thousands of them, sometimes hundreds of thousands, pressed together in aging stadiums, lining the streets of one place or another. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, so many people crowded in a local stadium in 2016 that it seemed to heave from the human swarm, everyone craning upward, squinting at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/22\/multimedia\/22pope-francis-childrens-hospital-qkvl\/22pope-francis-childrens-hospital-qkvl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33379,18714,180,61805,40147,4156,164769],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287865,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287863\/revisions\/287865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}