Francisco “Paco” Olveira is a priest from the Opting for the Poor Priests Group

That was the simple way in which he introduced himself and signed his letters. One of the doctors at the clinic where he was hospitalized greeted him once by saying, “Good morning, Holy Father.” He responded by saying, “Good morning, Holy Son.”

Francis’ simplicity was much more than just a personality trait. It became a distinctive mark of his papacy: that we are all the same and have the same dignity. 

The signs were all there for everyone to see. When at the start of his papacy he asked the crowd gathered in Saint Peter’s Square to bless him before he did the same for them. When instead of introducing himself as the pope of the universal Church, he would say he was the bishop of Rome — which is what a pope is. When he would say, “You sure went far to find me, all the way to the end of the world.” When he took his first trip as pope to the island of Lampedusa to embrace so many people drowned in the Mediterranean. 

He also expressed these ideas through words, texts, and works. His legacy will last. I am confident that his papacy is a turning point from which the Church will have a hard time reversing. This is not to say that I am naive and do not know that, God forbid! — well, I know that God wouldn’t want that — the upcoming Conclave could choose an “orthodox” pope. What is true Christian orthodoxy if not a God that comes down to free his people after witnessing their oppression, as it says in the Book of Exodus? 

But even if that were to be the case, whoever comes won’t have it easy and will face some very loathsome comparisons. 

I have just returned from a country in Africa, where they would kiss my hand upon greeting me. A priest is like a superior being, the term being an equivalent of the Latin word sacerdos, meaning sacred, but Jesus did not belong to the priestly caste. When faced with this situation, I would either kiss their hands or withdraw mine. I saw more clerical robes than in the Vatican, everyone so well dressed and tidy. A lot of episcopal palaces — and I mean literal palaces. I heard people say that homosexuality is a thing of perverts and the possessed and that God had made us “man and woman.” That they would have lynched Francis had they had the chance when he allowed the blessing of same-sex partners — this was not meant literally, but a word to the wise is enough. 

Steering this large ship can not have been easy. What some of us felt as coming up short, others saw as an aberration. He had courage, mercy, and compassion for the poor, but he also confronted those in power, inside the Church and out of it.

In these times when reading seems to be more difficult — specifically if we’re talking about papal documents — many of those now reading these lines have likely not read anything written by Francis. As a priest, I have probably glossed over no more than twenty percent. It is because of this that I invite you to read two very short texts. 

The first are points 52 to 60 from Francis’ apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel. In those pages, he offers a description of the current world that can be summarized by his famous phrase about Argentine retirees, where he alluded to the fact that the government “paid for pepper gas instead of social justice.” The other texts I’d recommend are the speeches he gave in his meeting with social justice movements, where he said, “this model is unsustainable,” and called them “social poets.” 

I’d like to remind everyone that this government calls social leaders poverty managers and sneaky intermediaries, while describing social justice as shit, an aberration, and a robbery. 

The company you keep says a lot about you. Evo Morales, Lula da Silva, Pepe Mujica, and the world ‘s poor. I am poor, that is why I ask!, he usually screams while drunk… I don’t have a father nor a mother! My father is in Rome! My father is in Rome!, he screams again and again…My father is Francis and he’s in Rome!…He yells to be heard… to let everyone know what he is feeling. His name is Miguel Angel, from Corrientes, and has been living in Quilmes for some years now… a man who lives on the streets… couldn’t recover after his wife died in an accident… left his kids and let himself go. Hearing him speak about being an orphan — “I have no father nor mother” — while living on the street in an absolutely precarious situation, his screams saying that “his father is Francis and is in Rome” do not go unnoticed. I cannot stop seeing him as a “living icon,” the reflection of millions of orphans who see or feel in Francis the mother or father they deeply miss. A dear, archetypical figure we miss yearn for, someone delivers us back to the primordial unity…

A priest from Quilmes sent me this text in May 2023. Miguel Angel is — or was, on the street you die quickly — a member of his parish. We sent it to Francis, who responded three days later: “Your words are dear to me. Thank you for letting me know of this man. I pray and suffer…”