HOW I LEARNED POPE FRANCIS WAS A TRUE ‘POPE OF PERIPHERIES’

BY INES SAN MARTIN / OSV NEWS

BUENOS AIRES (OSV News)

— It is often said that we are our truest selves when we are happy, comfortable and surrounded by those we love and trust. During each of the nearly 30 trips I made with Pope Francis, there was always a memorable moment when his true self would come out to play.

Early on, we would recognize this moment. The pontiff would completely disregard his prepared remarks and start speaking in Spanish — with the interpreter often struggling to keep up — particularly when he lapsed into Argentinian patois.

These days, more settled into his role of a globe-trotting pope and less prone to go off-script when speaking to thousands, you can still identify the moment where he forgets that he carries the earthly concerns of the Catholic Church on his shoulders, and he’s back to being that young man who vowed to dedicate his life to Christ.

These moments never occur during the mandatory visits with politicians nor during the necessarily solemn Masses.

The pope of the peripheries comes truly alive in the soccer stadiums surrounded by thousands of youth in South Korea, in a high-security prison in Mexico, or in a municipal dump-turnedcity within a city in Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar. The joy Pope Francis felt when visiting fellow Argentine, Father Pedro Opeka, missionary and founder of Akamasoa, the humanitarian association that serves the people living in the garbage dump, is ingrained in the hearts and minds of many of the often-jaded reporters who get to travel aboard the papal plane.

Father Opeka turned a place where children would fight with dogs over discarded food into a city of friendship, with its own schools, universities, sports centers and a church that welcomes friends and foes of the faith every weekend. Sunday Mass in Akamasoa has become a must to anyone visiting.

From the start of his pontificate, the first pope from the global South has been denouncing the piecemeal consumption and exploitation of developing nations by the West. Coming from the Southern hemisphere, the pope is particularly aware of this reality and has used his papal platform to give voice to the voiceless who are oppressed by poverty, exploitation, corrupt leadership and war.

We saw it earlier this year, when he fulfilled what he called a “dream” visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, two countries in Africa affected by war, external exploitation and hunger.

From the smallness of these countries — small in the international scene, that is — Pope Francis called on the world to see not only their plights, sufferings and marginality, but also the many gifts and resources both nations