VATICAN CITY – In English, it’s “to put yourself in someone’s shoes” …it means that to feel what someone else feels, you just have to wear their shoes. Pope Francis did it, wearing, even in death as well as in life, poor man’s shoes. No red papal slippers like Wojtyla, nor black moccasins like Ratzinger. On his feet, in a coffin already as a pauper, the black (orthopedic) shoes that he used in life, old, worn out. The same shoes that walked around the world with him, so committed to bringing a new evangelization made of welcoming the “least.” And like those “least,” he wanted to wear, even in death as well as in life, his very normal shoes. →

VATICAN CITY – First the powerful’s farewell, then people’s, finally the least’s, the most important to him and for this very reason appointed to pay him the last “goodbye” before burial, in the spirit of the Gospel: “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…”. It’s the funeral of Pope Francis, who made humility his modus vivendi: from the renunciation – in life – of residing in the papal apartment, to the resting – in death – in a simple coffin, on the floor, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore instead of in the Vatican. →