“MGA BABALA”

THE POPE WHO NEVER CAME HOME

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As I follow Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic journey through Argentina, I cannot help thinking of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who left Buenos Aires on February 26, 2013, to participate in the conclave following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

I wonder what was going through his mind as he boarded that flight to Rome. He was already 76 years old, and probably expected to return to Buenos Aires after helping elect the next Pope.
But on March 13, he himself was elected. And that was it. He never managed to return to his beloved homeland during the twelve years of his pontificate.

I have heard many beautiful stories about the kind of archbishop Bergoglio was. He lived simply, took public transportation, visited the poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, and made himself available to ordinary people.

My journalist friends Gerry O’Connell and Elisabetta Piqué, who became close family friends of Bergoglio, have shared touching memories of his warmth and friendship. He baptized their children, shared meals with them, and maintained his friendship with them even after becoming Pope.

Gerry recalls that on February 28, 2013, they had dinner together in Rome and watched on television the historic departure of Benedict XVI from the papacy. Little did they know that their friend Jorge would be elected Pope less than two weeks later.

And now, thirteen years later, another Pope is visiting Argentina. But this Pope has a special connection with Francis.

It was Francis who reached out to the relatively little-known Augustinian Robert Francis Prevost after he had completed his term as Prior General of the Augustinians. In 2014, he appointed him to Chiclayo in Peru, where he was ordained bishop. He became Bishop of Chiclayo in 2015, just a month before I myself received my appointment as Bishop of Kalookan.

I often wonder what conversations the two of them might have had, and what Francis saw in this quiet, unassuming missionary bishop that eventually led him to entrust him with the Dicastery for Bishops in 2023.

Gerry O’Connell has described Prevost as one of Francis’s final surprises. Indeed, he was hardly a household name among the cardinals. Although American by birth, he had spent so much of his life in Peru that he identified deeply with the Peruvian people.

And now this same Robert Francis Prevost, as Pope Leo XIV, is walking the streets of Buenos Aires, visiting the places and meeting the people so dear to Pope Francis.

I find something deeply moving about this. It is almost as though Francis is accompanying Leo in spirit, returning at last to the homeland he loved but never managed to revisit as Pope.

Perhaps this is one of the beautiful mysteries of providence. Sometimes the things we are unable to accomplish in our lifetime are entrusted to others who come after us.

And this makes me wonder about Pope Leo himself. Born in Chicago, formed as a missionary in Peru, and now Bishop of Rome, will he someday be given the opportunity to visit his own homeland as Pope?

I can only imagine what a papal visit to the United States of America would be like, especially at a time when that country is struggling with so many divisions.

For now, as I watch Pope Leo being welcomed by the Argentine people, I cannot help thinking of that elderly Jesuit archbishop who boarded a plane in Buenos Aires thirteen years ago, expecting to come home.

He never did. But perhaps, in a way that only God could have arranged, a part of him has finally come home through his successor.