The balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro in the Vatican still looked on Monday morning adorned as on the special occasions, after Pope Francis, convalescent ,. After the death of the Argentine Pontiff, it will be the new Pope who appears to this distinguished balcony to appear to the world.
The Plaza de San Pedro and the Basilica are gradually filled, as is the case with any normal day and more now during the jubilee, where the influx of the pilgrims who are mixed with tourists is constant. For all the streets that are going to give the famous colonnade of San Pedro, Romans, penitent, faithful and curious. Also several crews of operators that prepare to remove the flowers from the balcony and the door of the basilica, as well as the thousands of chairs that had been placed to follow the Mass of Easter Sunday.
The day before, Domingo de Resurrection, one of the most important celebrations for Christians, Francisco, who died at 7.35 hours on Monday – just after Holy Week – he toured the square, or who knows, if to say goodbye.
In the same place, on Monday the whispers of a group of nuns who, supported by the bars of the main door of the basilica, pray some litanies, looking at the main altar, contrast with the noise of a pair of tractors that maneuver behind and go ahead, pulling trailers loaded with metallic chairs and fences.
“We knew that he was very sick, but in the same way he has caught us by surprise practically, one cannot prepare for something like that. He has been a great Pope,” says Sor Giuseppina Impaglioto, an Italian nun who has been in Rome since 1978 and has approached the Plaza de San Pedro to pray for the late Pontiff, spiritual leader of more than one billion Catholics.
With the daily trajín of a place as tourist and busy as the Vatican, even a day as particular as that of the Pope’s disappearance, life takes place normally, although most of the comments that are heard in different languages have to do with the news of the day. “Little by little, all this will be filled with people who come alone to say goodbye to the Pope, I planned Crowded.
Around him a group of nuns, such as the great crowd, takes pictures with the background basilica, a couple holds their mobile with an extended arm to take a snapshot, a family makes a gesture to offer their phone to those who pass around them to ask them to take a photograph. There are those who buy souvenirs In a traveling position of the square that offers magnets and keychains. Others look for the sources to cool off and the shadows to protect themselves from the spring sun on Monday that is scorching in the central hours of the day. Many sit on the floor to rest while looking at their phones, some are reading on their screens and commenting on information about Francisco’s death and others simply reviewing the snapshots they have taken on their trip to the eternal city.
In the coming and going of people who leave the basilica, in the moments of traffic jam, when the row stops, the strangers talk to each other, if they recognize the same language, about the news. “How appropriate we have been, we had to come just the day the Pope dies,” a man in Italian.
“Historical Moment”
The professor of a Genoa Institute who is on an excursion brings together his students in a circle and explains what has happened, before illustrating the programming of the day. “It is a historical moment for the Church, we hope to pass, now we are going to attend one mass in another church,” he says. Some people leave flowers in the street lamps or the sources of the square. A newly married couple also passes with their photographer to take photos on this sunny day in front of the basilica. She is dressed in red and carries her wedding bouquet. Some passersby who pass by their side go around to contemplate the scene that, on the other hand, is part of the normal climate of a tourist anthill through which thousands of people of the most varied origin pass every day.
In the environment they look, also as every day ,. Pablo Gómez travels through Europe with his wife Marcela from Navarro, an Argentine city 100 kilometers from Buenos Aires, to tour “the places originally from their ancestors.” They have just arrived from Croatia and have stopped in Rome before returning to Argentina. “We wanted to see Francisco,” he says, “but we don’t arrive,” they complete the phrase in unison. They are religious, followers of Don Bosco and know Bergoglio. She participated years ago in a catechesis course taught by the then prelate Jorge Mario Bergoglio. “In a part of the formation he raised the possibility of entering politics to make people’s lives better. He offered me this option directly, not to mention any specific group, and I had never participated in politics, I told him no and told me that the only way to improve the world was getting into politics and soon I presented myself and I was elected councilor in my city,” he recalls. And he continues: “They are experiences that mark us. I was very sorry that Francisco could not return to Argentina, for us it would have been an important point of union.” “He came to transform the Church. He has made great changes within the structure of the Church and has also initiated dialogue with other religions and other branches of Christianity,” says her husband.
A fixed image on one of the giant screens of the square, for which the Pope’s masses are usually broadcast, remembers the death of the pontiff and announces that the rosary will be prayed in the afternoon for his soul.
“I think he felt in some way that his end was approaching. He gave me that impression when he visited the jail on Holy Thursday to see the prisoners and also when he went to pray to the Basilica of Santa María la Mayor, which is where it will be buried. It seems that I was saying: ‘Let me do the latter things, which are the last messages that I want to launch into the world, my last intentions; when I am not doing these things, or when I did not keep doing these things. Pray, as saying: ‘Let me see this last time, ”says Danilo Iodice, a 32 -year -old psychiatrist, originally from Salerno, who works in Rome. “It seems that he has decided to spend his last hours as he wanted, giving his last message as Pope,” adds Iodice, who has gone to the Plaza de San Pedro on his free day with a friend to see what environment he was on such a marked day. “While in Rome it is impossible not to follow the news of the Pope,” he says. He agrees with him his friend Fabio Caradente, a 33 -year -old Neapolitan educator who also lives in Rome. “You breathe a very particular and unusual climate. It will not have been easy for him to send a message to the world showing himself in public in his circumstances, being bad, he wanted to be among the people,” says Caradent.
