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.
Before him, Pope Ratzinger, during his pontificate wore red shoes, even if then after his resignation, in his retirement as Pope Emeritus, he chose comfortable sandals. For the eternal rest in the coffin, however, black moccasins were preferred. Going back, in the crystal sarcophagus of Pope John XXIII in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pontiff is seen with red papal slippers.
Francis, no. And his choice to be buried with those worn shoes brings to mind, as the AGI press agency points out, the broken shoes of Don Orione, proclaimed a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2004.
Don Orione… but who was he? Born in Pontecurone in the diocese of Tortona (Alessandria, Italy) on June 23, 1872, between 1899 and 1903 he founded the “Piccola Opera della Divina Provvidenza”, a religious and charitable organization that mainly deals with assistance to the poor, the sick and the disabled, as well as providing education and training to young people. The ‘least’, in short: this already links him to Francis. And also for Don Orione, when he died on March 12, 1940, old shoes were specifically chosen: in Tortona, in the case containing his body, you can see the soles of the worn shoes, with a hole in the sole.
Don Flavio Peloso, until eight years ago superior general of the “Opera Don Orione” and currently director of the “Orionine” formation house at Paterno in Tortona, wanted to remember the story in a post on his Facebook profile: an emblematic story of a way of doing and of being the Church. In the post (here below), he tells a small ‘miracle’ and underlines that Don Orione throughout his life used to give away the new shoes he received, always preferring his own, even if they had holes in them. “Pope Francis was placed in the coffin with his old and worn out used shoes. A few photographs of the body, before the coffin was closed, showed them. Those shoes – writes Don Flavio – are worth more than an encyclical on the poverty of the Christian and of the Church”.
“As an Orionine” he continues, “my thoughts immediately went to Don Orione’s old shoes, with a hole in the sole, displayed in the glass urn in the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Guardia in Tortona. When I accompany pilgrims, I always point out that detail and the story behind it, which I personally heard from Dr. Maria Venturini, of Monsignor Gianfranco Nolli’s medical team who treated Don Orione’s body, who came to the Curia on February 9, 2000. ‘When we were dressing him – Dr. Venturini, an anatomical pathologist, told me – the priests gave us a pair of new shoes for his feet. We put them on him but, strangely, in the morning we found them slipped off. We tried again the following evening and, in the morning, we saw them slipping off his feet again. Don Ignazio Terzi, with a motivation that seemed a bit devout to us, told us that perhaps Don Orione didn’t want new shoes, but used shoes, like a poor man. We put them on him. an old pair of shoes. They fit him well’. They are the ones that still remain on Don Orione’s feet…”. Poor even in death, like Francis.
In the pics above: Pope Francis chose to be buried in his normal, worn-out shoes (left), like Don Orione (right) – photo from Facebook
