He saved his last ‘dance’ for his flock
Pope Francis’ last official act was a graceful ride on his popemobile on Vatican Square, waving to tens of thousands of Catholic faithful and extending his blessings to them.
It was Easter Sunday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. Just before his last brave “dance,” he was able to give his final Apostolic Blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. In less than 24 hours, he would join his Maker.
Pope Francis had his doubts, like any other human being. According to the Vatican press office, the Holy Father asked his trusted nurse Massimiliano Strappetti on Black Saturday, “Do you think I can manage it?” This was when the Pope and Strappetti had gone together to St. Peter’s Basilica to review the “route” he would take on the square on Easter Sunday.
You see, the late Pope wanted to offer “one last, meaningful surprise to the 50,000 faithful with a ride in the popemobile” on Easter after the blessing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica façade, the Vatican said.
“Once in St. Peter’s Square, he embraced the crowd, especially the children, since this was his first ride after being discharged from Gemelli hospital, as well as the last outing among the faithful of his life.”
Tired but content, the Pope told his nurse, “Thank you for bringing me back to the square.”
He saved his last dance for the people he so loved and lived to serve as the vicar of Christ on Earth.
That was Easter Sunday.
At 5:30 am the following day, Easter Monday, when the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection had passed and the world was getting ready for a new day, a new life, Pope Francis silently passed on to everlasting life. It was as if he waited for an ordinary day to bid farewell, as he had always adhered to an ordinary way of life, especially as pope.
His death was quick and painless.
According to the Vatican, the first signs of distress came at 5:30 am on Easter Monday.
Around an hour later, after making a gesture of farewell with his hand to Strappetti and lying in bed in his second-floor apartment at the Casa Santa Marta, the Pope “fell into a coma.”
“According to those who were with him in his final moments, he did not suffer. It all happened quickly,” the Vatican said.
‘I felt annihilated’
Sometime in January 2015, when Manila was exulting in the visit of Pope Francis, lovingly called “Lolo Kiko” by many Filipino faithful, the doors of his official residence while in Manila swung open for his favorite people — the poor and the downtrodden.
When the city was clothed in darkness, and many prepared to call it a day, mothers with children in tow — some of them very sick — knocked on a pair of tall steel gates on Taft Avenue in Manila, the Apostolic Nunciature.
They came from afar to seek the blessing of a guest at the house beyond those gates: Pope Francis. To their surprise, the gates swung open for them. They saw tall foreign-looking guards beyond the gates, who let them in.
“There was even a child with severe hydrocephalus and the Swiss Guard allowed mother and child in for a blessing,” a source told me then.
In his interview on board the Philippine Airlines A340 that took him back to Rome, the Pope said these gestures of the mothers of the sick children moved him — they did not bother him.
“Then there were the gestures of the mothers who brought their sick children…They did not hide the children, they brought them to the Pope so that he would bless them: ‘This is my child, he is this way, but he is mine.’ All mothers know this, they do this. But it’s the way they did this that struck me. The gesture of fatherhood, of motherhood, of enthusiasm, of joy.”
At the Mall of Asia Arena, Dr. Francis Xavier Dimalanta volunteered to be with the Order of Malta as marshal for the Pope’s visit. He vouched for a mother with a sick baby, who was attached to a breathing apparatus. Later the Pope approached the mother and blessed the baby. This moved Dr. Francis to tears.
“I was holding the baby’s oxygen tank. Just being so close and touching the Pope’s garments meant so much,” adds Dr. Francis. “I couldn’t understand why tears were flowing unabashedly down my cheeks.”
A three-second glance from the Pope, says my sister Valerie Sotto, was worth being sandwiched by a crush of strangers under the tropical heat when she lined up to see him on Jan. 17.
Jesuit Fr. Jett Villarin, then president of the Ateneo de Manila University, told me at the general papal audience at Malacañang: “God is always present but it is but human to want to see some visible signs of that presence.”
It was a blessing of a lifetime for me to have also seen the pope up close and be blessed by him during the general papal audience at Malacañang, upon the invitation of then President Aquino.
On “Shepherd One,” the code name for the special Philippine Airlines flight that took him back to Rome, the Pope talked about his Philippine sojourn, saying it “annihilated” him. A hyperbole, to be sure, but we all know what he meant. Like those being “slain” in an emotional moment of faith, he must have been totally bowled over by the ocean of people (a record six to seven million at the Quirino Grandstand at the Luneta) who came to see him, and the tsunami of affection that rose from their depths.
When it was time to go home, the Pope carried his own valise as he boarded the aircraft.
A pope of firsts
Life goes on. Soon there will be a new pope.
In his 12-year papacy, Father Jorge Bergoglio achieved what he set out to do. He was told at his election in 2013 by a fellow papal candidate, “Don’t forget the poor, don’t forget the poor.”
Loved by kings and comedians, rich and poor, the powerful and the weak, Pope Francis was a biased man. He always chose the poor and the marginalized.
He was the first Jesuit pope, the first Latin American, the first from the Americas, and the first born or raised outside of Europe since the 8th century.
Pope Francis was the first pope since Pope Pius X to live outside the papal apartments. He lived in a dorm. He was the first pope to choose not to wear the elaborate papal garments. On Saturday, he will be the first pope in hundreds of years to be buried in Rome’s Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
The pope of many firsts favored the last. Mission accomplished, Pope Francis. Rest well now in the arms of the Father and in the bosom of Mary. *
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