The return of the Bishop of Rome to his people
Pope Francis' connection to the Urbe is evidenced by his visit to countless parishes, particularly the most deprived ones
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In the translation of the body of Pope Francis to St. Mary Major, under the protection of Mary "salus populi romani", the return of the Roman Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, to his people who had greeted him on Saturday 26 April in St. Peter's Square was accomplished, more imposing and steadfast than the rulers who also bowed to the last universal symbol that the Earth possesses.
The Pope himself, as a diligent bishop, has visited countless parishes in the Urbe, especially the most deprived ones (as testified in Giovanni Tridente's book, Pellegrino di periferia: le visite di Papa Francesco alle parrocchie romane, 2019). In his long pontificate, Pope Wojtyła alone visited or received more than 300 parishes in the diocese, almost all of them in Rome.
The Conclave will not elect the moderator of political currents, nor a sovereign of the globe, nor the federator of national churches, nor the master of ceremonies of an ancient language, but the bishop of Rome, a pastor therefore who must be endowed, as Rupert of Deutz wrote in the 12th century, with "a very strong zeal for the word of the Lord" that transfigures his face like that of Elijah (De victoria verbi Dei), for the word of the Lord, the Announcement, has preceded his Church and will continue to precede it "to the ends of the earth", renewing that first-fruits which in the Nativity the angels proclaimed to the shepherds, for the Good News brings "peace to all men of good will", to the whole of humanity in search of itself.
Indeed, in the Encyclical Letter Brothers All (3.10.2920) he emphasised: 'We need to constitute ourselves into a "we" that inhabits the Common House'. Now this 'common house' certainly does not arise from languages, in their Babelic finitude, nor from the plurality of beliefs, customs, traditions of human consortium, but rather from the universal yearning for peace, so well described by St Augustine in De Civitate Dei as to admit that even the heavenly city is enriched by earthly peace: "Therefore also the city of heaven in this exile profits from earthly peace, protects and desires [.... the agreement of human interests in the sphere of the goods pertaining to the nature of men" (XIX, 17).
Peace, Augustinianly, is the true marker of fraternity.
