A reflection from Raymond Friel, CEO at Caritas Social Action Network (CSAN):
I met Pope Francis in person in May 2023 at an audience for the leaders of the Caritas global network. Around five hundred of us gathered in the marble-lined splendour of the Clementine Hall in the Vatican. Our audience was due to begin at 12 noon. There was a loud murmur of conversation as we waited, until someone said, “It’s the pope!” Without any fanfare or announcement, Pope Francis walked into the room. We shuffled quickly to our feet, taken aback. He gestured us to sit and sat down himself.
He was holding a ten-page speech, “but you can read that later,” he said in Italian, handing the pages to a cardinal. He spoke off-the-cuff for a minute or so about Caritas – God’s love among us – then spent the rest of the audience shaking the hand of every single person in the room. I was sitting beside one of our bishops. “Watch what he’s doing,” he said. “He’s teaching us.
What Pope Francis was teaching us what that reality is more important than ideas, that the art of encounter – the art of God made flesh in Jesus – is about closeness, warmth, attention. In our communities, that encounter leads to accompaniment – another favourite word of Pope Francis – to social friendship, and a desire to advocate for social justice. While I was waiting my turn to shake the pope’s hand, I was wondering – as we all were, it turned out – what I might say to him. In the end, I settled on a few simple words which now sum up my feelings for this remarkable papacy, “Grazie, Papa Francesco.”
