23 April 2025 – Today, the world seems to be more lonely and more exposed to the threats of its own miseries. Pope Francis is dead.
I had the great honour of meeting and getting to know him. He was my compatriot, my Pope and my spiritual friend. The void left by his departure is very deep.
Francis put his whole life at the service of those most in need: the poor, the marginalised, the sick in body and mind, the persecuted. He saved many Argentines from the horrors of the dictatorship. He gave a plate of food to those who had no bread. Many families got their own house, thanks to the help they received from this man who gave them his own salary.
He always lived simply. He never aspired to wealth, tribute and recognition or power. He brought that simplicity to the Vatican. He chose to live in Santa Marta and not in the Apostolic Palace.
Some of us, members of The Club of Rome, witnessed the frugality of his dinners. It was in 2017, when we were hosted at his place of residence, on the occasion of the Watershed Water Conference, which we organised jointly with the Vatican. He would arrive at the austere Santa Marta restaurant and with his own hands take an apple, bring his plate to the table and pour water into his glass.
In St. Peter’s Square, he presented the Water Conference and named The Club of Rome, and turning to us, he gave us a smile. Two years before that proud meeting, he had given the world his second encyclical: Laudato si (Praise be to you) dedicated to our common home: the Earth. In that historic document, Francis called on us to assume our responsibility as human beings to care for nature, animal life, air and water.
In chapter 4, the core of the encyclical, he proposes an integral ecology as a new paradigm of justice; an ecology “that incorporates the central place of human beings in this world and their relations with the reality that surrounds them”. Francis understood the link and close interaction between environmental, social and human issues. They are not watertight compartments, nor will there be real solutions until the issue of life is addressed in a holistic manner.
Everything was of interest to him, to his work and his concern: nature and the destruction to which it is subjected by arrogance and greed, human beings and their suffering, the environment and its degradation, politics and the infamy of war, education and those who do not have access to it, art, literature (he was an impenitent reader), science and technology. Knowledge for the sake of love, not to acquire power.
He loved everyone and judged no one: “Who am I to judge?” He eagerly sought inter-religious dialogue and with admirable courage faced reforms within the Church itself that would have been unthinkable.
His proximity spread joy and hope: “The hope that opens horizons, makes us dream the unimaginable and realises it”.
He was a friend of The Club of Rome. Today, he is an inspiration, a light that will illuminate our march along the road we must travel in times of shadows and uncertainty.
May he rest in peace.
