Pope Francis, like all of us, had his own “lifestyle”, a construct evoked by Alfred Adler to describe the specific way with which each of us, therefore also a pope, pursues his own purposes. A sort of digital footprint that makes us unmistakable. However, what we read in the newspapers or the public manifestations of a character rarely help to basically grasp the flow of our personality. If you want to overcome the limit of the conventions, you must go down to the details, contact first -hand material, preferably minutes, which speak of us with greater credibility, because they are without the quantum effect caused by the presence of the narrators concerned.

The consistency of the minimum finds reflects the true nature of the lifestyle, its continuity, the persistence of its finalisms. What you are about to read is the result of this prerequisite, apart from the very first episode, which is spectacular for the setting but deeply intimate for what reveals, on the inner structure of the Pope, on the nature of its training courses.

Francesco’s gesture

Spring of 2013, Francesco has just been elected. I am in Rome. I just finished holding a conference for the Adventist Church, the national headquarters are located on the Lungotevere. I start with my wife towards the center. We arrive in St. Peter’s Square, it is packed. We discover that it is a gathering of families and that Francesco will make his first public release. We decide to stop and we do not get disappointed. It begins to talk about the grandmother, telling by making the enormous weight intuited that that figure had in the construction of the faith – day by day – of the future pontiff.

Not through words but through behavior. A change of perspective with respect to the predecessor, the exaltation of the daily experience, which will be a characteristic of Francesco, and the recognition of the only way in which Christianity can be transmitted, the same that I have always considered it can enhance the educational gesture, that is, the testimony. I take on the pope’s domestic story, assigning the value that in the Adlerian reading is attributed to the “first memories”, they, together with dreams and family constellation, represent a privileged and well -approximate access to mental life, to its hidden strategies. Francesco was proclaiming the fundamental value of attention to others. It was not denied, as we will see, net of one’s own character, in the following episodes, of which I have been witnessed, direct or almost.

The simplicity of Bergoglio

A few years before that gathering of families, Virna accompanies his boys on the Via Francigena. They arrive in Rome exhausted, are leaning against the barriers of St. Peter’s Square, sweaty to the socks. “It would be nice to embrace the Pope,” says one of the boys. Virna is used to believing in the impossible. He writes a note. “Holiness and I would like to embrace her.” Add the mobile number to the sheet and give it to a Swiss guard. A joyful madness, but after a few minutes he receives a phone call. “In an hour in Santa Marta, Francesco will gladly embrace you.” The story that Varna made me at the time of that meeting – witty, simple, without sacredness – is unforgettable. “Here I am, we can hug us.” Then he made them sit and entertained himself with them for a long time, without haste.

A few years ago, a dear priest friend, undermined by a serious autoimmune disease, wrote to Francesco, talking about his problem but reassuring him about the continuity of his mission. The Pope invited him to Santa Marta, spoke for an entire hour, not the time of a kiss, and from that day Francesco constantly informed himself from his health, from the person concerned. In these and in other episodes, the concept of delegation is absent, despite the amount of work and the advanced age, exactly as it happened in the relationship with the grandmother, the voice of the verb to be dominated the action. Other roads are not possible and if they fight they do not bring fruit. The creator did not delegate, he embodied. On November 21, five months ago, another priest friend returning from a long and delicate Vatican service, a true priest, of those who like Francesco, received a beautiful letter from the Pope. I read it in silence, I think I know when the words are thrown down to random or represent the result of precise knowledge. “Continue to serve the people of God with joy and generosity. Never give in to discouragement and keep the sense of humor. Please please for me; I will pray for you. Fraternally. Francesco”.

The victim of pedophilia

Nobody gap between Francesco’s public statements and newspapers. But the episode that follows, in addition to confirming what has been said, tells how that coherence in the lifestyle of Francis always expands, even in highly dramatic situations. A person refers to me confidentially, he is upset. It was contacted by the mother of a victim of pedophilia, whose culprit (serial) had had a not adequately severe penalty in the canonical process.

That mother, whose son had suffered enormous damage, on which I do not dwell for a duty of confidentiality, would like to be listened to by a member of the Church to tell his drama. I advised her to write a letter directly to Pope Francis, for my part I would be committed to making it delivered in some way. It was the only help I could give her. I soon came the writing, I took advantage of the trip to Rome of the person who had reported the case, and I made it to a Roman lawyer near the Curia, a honest and reliable person, who in turn made him come directly into the hands of the Pope, almost without intermediation, as I had recommended. After two days, with enormous surprise, the Pope himself telephoned that woman. A sincerely mortified Francesco, folded by pain and eager to repair the evil caused. He suggested the way to reopen the canonical process. So it was, with the so much that he followed.

*Domenico Barrilà, Adlerian analyst and writer, represents an authoritative voice in the panorama of Italian psychology. He is the author of about thirty volumes, almost all reprinted, many translated abroad, the last of which “individualists grow” (ed. Feltrinelli)

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