A man in white with a simple iron cross around his neck—this was the Pope the world saw emerging from the Loggia of Blessings on March 13, 2013. Without gold, cape, or vestments, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, coming "almost from the end of the world," became the new Bishop of Rome and chose a name no one had ever dared take before. In that humid late afternoon of rain, hearing the name the cardinal from Buenos Aires had selected, we thought of the poor, of simplicity, of peace, of care for creation. But we thought of something else too. Because Francis of Assisi was also the saint who left a splendid testimony to what friendship means. With those different from us in sex, faith, culture, ability, language, or way of seeing the world: friendship is a journey made together, in a path that is deep, mutual, and equal.
The pontificate of Franciscus has been one whose light has spoken of peripheries becoming the center, of "discards" given back their voice, of migrants finally recognized as human persons, of an economy that tortures and kills, of everyday evangelical choices that can be made even when they cost effort, money, time, and glory. But it has also been a pontificate that has walked alongside people with disabilities.
One luminous spark stands out: the message the Pope sent for World Day of Persons with Disabilities in 2019. Luminous not only in its content, but in the choice of words itself. Taking a stand for a culture of encounter, denouncing discrimination and rejection, Bergoglio marked a crucial turning point: he never used words like sick or sickness, never spoke of "the disabled," but always and only referred to "persons with disabilities." And since (as Luce Irigaray tells us, and as we often repeat), speech is never neutral, this was a choice that marked a radical shift in how we understand disability.
Francis called us to take charge "with strength and tenderness" of situations of marginalization, to move forward together in a journey (one that may be "arduous") essential to guarantee everyone "active participation in civic and ecclesial community." Because too many people still "feel they exist without belonging and without participating," because that "social sin" still prevails that "considers some lives first-class and others second-class." All of this rooted in the certainty that "the person with disability, in order to build themselves, needs (…) also to belong to a community."
That community that was lost to all of us a few months later, when COVID turned our lives upside down. And there was the Pope who had chosen Lampedusa as his first apostolic journey; who on Holy Thursday 2013 at the juvenile detention center Casal del Marmo in Rome had washed the feet of two girls, one of them Muslim (a Pope had never before chosen a woman to represent the apostles at the washing of feet); who had opened the extraordinary Jubilee in 2016 from Bangui, in the Central African Republic; who on one of the Fridays of mercy had spent an afternoon at Chicco in Ciampino; who had celebrated Mass at that border of blood and injustice between the United States and Mexico; who since 2017 had changed the Church's stance on weapons and deterrence (at last their very possession for this purpose is condemned as a "counterfeiting of peace"); now, on that March 27, 2020, the Pope walked alone through an immense urban space.
Alone, limping, in the rain at that hour when day yields to darkness; alone, accompanied by the clamor of bells and ambulances, fragile and immensely strong all at once as he carried the world's pain to God, and the hope of faith. When he spoke—initially breathless from the journey he had made (a breath that would fail him often over time, yet rarely preventing him from being present, to the very end)—that man quoted an image very dear to Faith and Light.
"It seems evening has fallen," Bergoglio said from a Saint Peter's Square as bare as we had never seen it, and probably never will again. "Thick darkness has descended on our cities; it has seized our lives and filled everything with a deafening silence and a desolate emptiness that paralyzes all things (…). We found ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel, we were caught off guard by an unexpected and furious storm. We realized we were on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, yet at the same time important and necessary, all called to row together, all in need of comforting one another. We are all on this boat."
A boat carrying twelve small figures surrounded by a sky heavy with clouds and a restless sea—this is the symbol of Faith and Light. A boat to embody a community that lives, loves, suffers, and rejoices, together. Francis spoke to the world and of the world, but we felt—for once at least—in the front row. We, who know well that it is not possible to "go forward each on our own"; that the only way to face hardship and let life grow is to move forward together.
Read also: Open Dialogue - for Pope Francis
The Pope continued in prayer that we—we especially—understood completely, even when we sometimes struggle to concentrate, to communicate, to see, to hear, to listen. We know this world thirsting for things, efficiency, and speed, a world deaf because made up of so many blind people convinced they are strong and capable of everything. Alone, suffering, and soaked, Francis did not speak to us, about us, or for us: Francis spoke with us. And he did so until Easter Sunday of this complex and painful year 2025.