Certainly one of the primary things I do after I enter Casa Santa Marta is take off my shoes. It has rained just about all day, and the cobblestones of Rome are wet and slippery; there isn’t any way I might have survived the walk from my hotel to the pope’s home in heels. I modify out of my black flats and into red pumps which are more of a stylistic nod to Benedict than Francis. But it surely is Pope Francis we’re here to see. And we’re thrilled.
The times leading as much as our interview have been full of a kind of triage, sorting what matters from what doesn’t; what now we have time for from what we don’t. My colleagues and I discuss questions for the pope and our travel itineraries. We discuss photographers and translators, WhatsApp group chats and dinner plans.
My husband and I also work out learn how to make the puzzle of every day fit together while I’m gone (hint: my saintly mother plays a really large role). My children might want to get to and from school. My in-laws will arrive from Ireland for his or her first visit in years. The Thanksgiving pies will have to be picked up from the farm-stand bakery.
I even have asked my older son and daughter what they think the pope should know or what they wish to tell him. My 6-year-old desires to know the pope’s favorite animal, and my ever-wise 4-year-old wants him to know that play is very important. They’ve drawn the pope pictures, as have their cousins. The 6-year-old has drawn the brand of the PBS show “Wild Kratts,” together with an ocelot, a leopard and a Komodo dragon. He writes his first name and his favorite color, summing up all of the relevant info a primary grader must form a friendship. The 4-year-old draws a red cross and red hearts and candles and little people holding the crosses. My 2-year-old draws a red scribble, which I can only assume is a theologically advanced yet abstract reflection on Pentecost.
Certainly one of the strangest things about sitting nose to nose with Pope Francis is how normal it feels.
Within the hours before my flight from Hartford to Rome, I begin to fret that I would not have the correct shoes, although I do know that it doesn’t matter what shoes you wear to fulfill the pope. Or perhaps it matters to this point as your attire could also be used to point out respect (or not), however it doesn’t matter in a Jesus-will-ask-you-about-it-at-the-last-judgment form of way. Yet, on my technique to the airport, while my husband and children waited within the automotive, I sprinted right into a DSW and scanned the shelves. I grabbed a pair of “poppy” coloured “microsuede” heels after which rushed to the register. Because, as vital because the shoes then seemed, making the flight was moreso.
There was a lot happening, so many individuals to plan for, that it will not be until the night before the interview, when Father Sam Sawyer and Gloria Purvis and I stand in the midst of St. Peter’s Square that I actually allow it to sink in that I could have the possibility to fulfill our church’s first Jesuit pope. As we eat gelato on a cold night, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses cut in stone atop the nearby partitions, I hope that some a part of the subsequent day’s conversation will help to construct our church.
The subsequent morning, there may be little pomp to entering Santa Marta. We simply pass by a couple of Swiss Guards in rain gear and a few gentlemen who help us hang up our coats. After the shoe swap, we walk through double doors to the room where we’ll speak to Pope Francis. It feels oddly familiar, just like the lobby of a retreat house but with more velvet chairs. An enormous painting of Our Lady Undoer of Knots watches over us as Father Sawyer sets up the audio equipment and the remainder of us gather our notes.
Moments later, the doors open and Pope Francis walks in leaning on a wheeled walker, the type with the little seat and the mesh basket underneath. Within the basket is a cane, stored at a diagonal, with a bit of silver crucifix wrapped near the highest. Nobody pronounces his arrival and he seemingly appears in our midst just like the Holy Spirit within the locked room.
I can simply be with him, notice how he looks at people once they talk over with him. How he pays attention. His laugh. I find it remarkable how much I feel like I understand him, even after I don’t understand all his words.
Certainly one of the strangest things about sitting face to face with Pope Francis is how normal it feels. How, despite the bizarre surroundings and company we’re in, the pope makes us feel at home in his home.
I believed that I can be nervous, that I’d stumble greater than usual over my words, or literally stumble in my heels. But as an alternative I feel calm. Which is a marked contrast to three:30 that morning after I had called my mom from my hotel room because I couldn’t sleep because of my nerves. “Just say to yourself: Not me, but God through me, because that’s all it’s anyway,” she says shortly before settling in to observe NCIS in real time. “Just say, ‘Holy Spirit be with me,’ and go.”
I catch parts of what Francis says in Spanish, but depend on Elisabetta Pique, our translator, for the total answers. There’s a frustrating element to the gap between my hearing and understanding, but there may be also something freeing. It gives me the possibility to easily observe. I don’t analyze Francis’ words or wait impatiently to reply. I can simply be with him, notice how he looks at people once they talk over with him. How he pays attention. His laugh. I find it remarkable how much I feel like I understand him, even after I don’t understand all his words.
Being near Francis made me wish to love people more and love more people.
Being near Francis made me wish to love people more and love more people. The experience made me feel a deep bond to the people beside me within the room. But being with him also kindled a desire to increase that bond to others. To look to them the best way Francis looked to us: open, loving, joyful, vulnerable. Willing to point out weakness and honesty and to dwell within the messiness. The thrill I felt with Francis has continued to grow the more I reflect on my time with him.
After the interview, I give Pope Francis my kids’ drawings and to my surprise he seems genuinely delighted. “For me?!” he asks as his face lights up. “Sí!” I say as he flips through them after which stores them within the basket of his walker. He doesn’t have a favourite animal but jokes that perhaps he’s “a concentration of all of the animals.”
I laugh, throwing my head back. But his comments also make me consider how much pressure we placed on him, how much so lots of us expect him to be every part to everyone. How hard it should be on him and the way joyful he manages to be within the midst of it.
Being on the Vatican and within the midst of all the sweetness that is a component of it—within the Sistine Chapel, within the Scavi, in St. Peter’s Basilica and within the pope’s own residence—gave me a greater appreciation for the role of the papacy. But it surely also helped me appreciate the boundaries of the office. Talking to Francis is loads like talking to your mother at 3:30 a.m. It makes you are feeling like every part shall be O.K., but you already know there’s loads you continue to need to work out.
I believe there is part of me that went into the interview on the lookout for answers, not simply to our questions but to the kind of doubts that arise from just being a component of a church full of sinners and from being one myself. But time and again, Francis pointed us back to the vital questions, those that come from a detailed reading of the Beatitudes and Matthew 25. Some a part of me hoped that the interview would help teach me learn how to be more like Francis. But it surely’s clear the one thing he wants is for us to wish to be more like Jesus.
