However, you look at it, however much you can admire or have in less sympathy, it will not be possible for anyone not to recognize that the figure of Pope Francis is one of those destined to remain forever in the imagination of the faithful, and beyond. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is one of those characters whose images will also be remembered in many years, and who with his concrete actions has led to a real and probably irreversible change in the life of the Church.

Francesco was many things, but it was first of all the pope of the gestures, a man who immediately had clear the media scope of any of his moves. We remember the evening of his election, and that “good evening” who warmed the hearts of everyone, and made the idea of ​​a shepherd who wanted to be a friend before judge, a parish priest of humanity, a simple priest of those who go to Sunday in the church and with a few words pronounced in the right way they infuse you trust.

From Bergoglio to Francesco

In the days immediately following, other signs followed to remain over time, and with which the next pontiff will also be called to confront each other.

The clothing, for example, which was deprived of the most evident signals of the “papal dignity” to which it had been uniform for centuries (removed the expensive red leather shoes, via the precious gold cross in the chest) and then immediately after the choice not to live in the apostolic palace, but at Casa Santa Marta, the hotel inside the Vatican that houses bishops, cardinals or passage personality.

In all his attitudes Francesco helped to transpire the image of a shepherd and a church that did not want to isolate himself, but intended to exercise his ministry in the midst of people.

“I want priests who smell of the sheep,” said Francesco in one of his very first homilies, using a beautiful image, destined to remain in the mind of many people. A priest and a bishop as he had been, who also as a cardinal of Buenos Aires saliva in the public bus and went to visit the Villas Miseria (the favelas of the capital) to meet poor and sick.

The gestures were not lacking in the following months, and how not to remember the trip to Lampedusa, made in July 2013, and that cross that had built in the Vatican with the wood of one of the boats crashed on the Italian beaches. As well as the decision to go around with a simple Ford Focus, that of going down to the Basilica to confess as a simple priest, to visit the poorest prisons or countries in the world. Or to receive the victims of the pedophilia of the clergy in confidential and protected hearings, a theme that saw him at the forefront, in perfect continuity with the turning point of the “penalty” that had started Benedict XVI (but not Wojtyla).

What was Pope Francis

A gigantic pope, who more than with theology (like Benedict XVI), rather than with the great confrontation with history (as had happened to Wojtyla), rather than with the government of the Church (like Paul VI and his Vatican Council II), made gestures the first pastoral of a pontificate destined to go down to history.

And of which everyone now, believers and not, must make it merit.