The author is a national deputy and former Argentine ambassador to the Holy See

During the last 12 days of Francis’s illness, I was constantly stopped around Buenos Aires by young people with the green handkerchiefs that demand legal abortion, the blue handkerchiefs that oppose it, by agnostics and people of other faiths, anxiously asking after him. Francis won the culture war: amid the Easter celebrations, Argentina united to weep for him. 

Francis was the shepherd who was close to his sheep, who moved the world, who chose to distance himself from the gilded halls of power and embrace the downtrodden. Who, as head of state of the Vatican, never ceased to be a pastor. His first trip as pontiff was to Lampedusa, a symbol of the situation of refugees. There, he denounced that the Mediterranean had become a cemetery. “They are here because we were there before,” he said. He asked us not to grow accustomed to the culture of indifference.

Francis worked indefatigably to build peace. Through his pastoral geopolitics, he managed to bring historic enemies to the table: Cuba and the United States, Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, by their Spanish initials), Armenia and Turkey, Israel and Palestine. Sometimes he managed it, sometimes he didn’t, but he never stopped trying. His actions included a call to a global day of prayer to halt the invasion of Syria. His call was so powerful that Barack Obama had to take a step back. 

He decried the culture of treating older adults and young people in their first jobs as disposable, proposing instead a culture of coming together. He forcefully defended the idea of land, roof and work as universal rights. He was a global spiritual leader, who taught us that either we are siblings, or we destroy each other. With his Laudato si’ encyclical, he convinced us that the planet is our common home, which obliged the world to put the issue on the agenda. 

He also left his mark on Diego Maradona. When they met, Francis embraced him and said: “I need you to fight for world peace and against hunger.” Diego broke down. “I closed my eyes and felt that I was with my mom in heaven and with him on earth,” he said.

That was Francis: human, tender, firm. A Pope who embraced instead of judging. Who did not shout, but rather listened. Who did not condemn, but understood.

He left us when the world was celebrating Easter Monday, the day the angel saw that Jesus’s tomb was empty because he had returned. Perhaps Francis chose that moment to reunite with Him.