ALPSIDE DOWNED: A pope’s hope

BERN, Switzerland (MindaNews / 23 April) — News of Pope Francis’ passing came as a shock to the family, to us who had encountered the Pope up close a few times that the loss already seemed personal.

The family had been lucky enough to meet the Pope, on account of our son Sebastian becoming a member of the Pontifical Swiss Guards since three years ago. He called Baste “El Filipino” and not only once did he beckon to Baste and gifted him with a book from his collection while Baste was on guard duty at the papal residence Casa Santa Marta.

He loved the Filipinos and was amused at the Filipinos’ local moniker for him: “Lolo Kiko.” He also loved the Filipinos’ sometimes outrageous sense of humor, including that of a gwatsing Cebuano monsignor who would joke that he “lived higher than the Pope” because his quarters at the Casa Santa Marta was a floor up from the pontiff’s.

My wife and I had shaken hands with the Pope on the May 6, 2022 swearing-in of Sebastian into the Guards during a ceremony at the Vatican. The Pope had graciously gone around the hall, meeting each of the couples whose sons were now serving him and the church in Rome.

I addressed the Pope with the formal “Santo Padre,” and my wife Theresa had managed to engage the Argentinian-born pontiff with a few more words in Spanish. The meeting was brief, but later I remarked to my wife that I felt that I had shaken the small hand of a child. To my surprise, my wife said she had felt the same, aside from the sensation that she was floating. The Pope looked bigger to us in person, and I had expected the grip of a big man. My sense of touch might have betrayed me at that moment, but the two of us? Was it the mischievous Niño that had given his hand to us, I wondered?

We first saw the Pope during his Papal visit to Geneva in June 2018, and thanks to our daughter Pia, who was a volunteer usher as a member of the Youths for Christ, we had managed to get good seats at the cavernous PalExpo and gotten a close look at the pontiff. He was just five years into his papacy, and had looked full of vigor at that time.

The last public Papal audience we attended was on February 12 this year, when it was mentioned that the Pope had an infection. But I was surprised to see him still making the rounds after his message, patiently shaking hands and talking with the audience that he knew had come from afar to see him.

Our three-year old granddaughter Elle, seeing the Pope approach pushed on a wheelchair, embraced the Pope and placed her head on his lap in her child-like innocence that this gesture would maybe help the old man get better. This audience was held just two days before the Pope would be admitted to the Gemelli hospital, there to spend more than a month in near-death crisis.

We managed to catch the livestream of Easter Sunday Mass on the Vatican channel EWTN and while it was encouraging to see the Pope on the balcony, I did not expect him anymore to make the usual rounds after the service owing to his recuperation. But he did that on the pope mobile, although we noticed that he could not anymore lift his arms to wave at the audience and at one point, it seemed a priest assistant was massaging the back of his head.

On hindsight, I thought the Pope was still generous with his time and presence with his flock, up to his last public moments. He made himself available to the people. He was, to the end, still following his admonition to all his priests to be “shepherds with the smell of the sheep.”

Others will remember Pope Francis for his mercy, others for his compassion, two values that he had shown in abundance during his term.

I will remember “Lolo Kiko” as a symbol of hope, in the way that he meant for Filipinos in January 2015, when he visited Manila and Leyte in particular, to meet and encourage the victims of the catastrophic super typhoon Yolanda.

I will remember him in a video, offering hope to Emanuele, an Italian child who was in turmoil because his father, an unbeliever, had recently died and Emanuele was not sure if his father could get to heaven. The Pope acclaimed before the small gathering that surely, God would not abandon a good man like Emanuele’s father, who had his four children baptized even if he was an unbeliever, and by doing so he had calmed a child’s heart.

And I will never forget the image of Pope Francis when he held his unprecedented Statio Orbis on March 27, 2020 to a world in fear under the pandemic, when he had stood alone in an empty and rainy St. Peter’s Square, presenting Christ as our only source of life and hope.

Farewell, Lolo Kiko! May you inspire us to also give hope, mercy and compassion to others.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Brady Eviota wrote and edited for the now defunct Media Mindanao News Service in Davao and also for SunStar Cagayan de Oro. He is from Surigao City and now lives in Bern, the Swiss capital located near the Bernese Alps.)