Pope Francis chose to be laid to rest at the feet of Our Lady — before her icon that he visited 120 times during his papacy: the “Salus Populi Romani” in the Basilica of St. Mary Major, the same image he wanted at the Vatican for an extraordinary prayer service in the heart of the pandemic.
Thus the end and the beginning of Pope Francis’ life were marked by closeness to Mary.
Young Jorge Bergoglio learned to love Mary from his grandmother, who wrote him a note on the day he was ordained in which she assured him, “A glance to Mary at the foot of the cross can make a drop of balm fall on the deepest and most painful wounds.”
Ordinary acts of love
Like most of the Pope’s spiritual life, his devotion to Our Lady was marked by simplicity. His days were punctuated by three Angelus prayers and a morning greeting before work. “Every morning when I get here to my study in the Apostolic Library, I pray to the Virgin Mary,” he once explained.
He urged us to pray Rosary daily, “so you can meet each day with the Virgin Mother, learning from her to cooperate fully with God’s plans of salvation.” He had an icon of Our Lady of Silence placed in the elevator he used — a reminder to himself and his visitors to ponder all things and avoid gossip. And the entire Church is now enamored of Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, thanks to Pope Francis having “introduced” her to us. However, the pope’s “simple” acts of devotion had roots in his deep theological and mariological understanding.
Mary’s personality
A look at how the pope spoke of Our Lady reveals how well he knew her, as a human being and a mother.
He found her silent pondering and her standing at the foot of the cross to reveal a “beautiful detail about Mary’s psychology.” She doesn’t get “depressed when faced with life’s uncertainties,” nor does she protest or “rail against what life dictates,” he said. Instead, she “listens” and “welcomes life as it is given to us.” She teaches us the “virtue of waiting, even when everything seems meaningless. She always trusts in the mystery of God, even when he seems to be eclipsed by the evil of the world.”
Pope Francis knew Mary as a woman of valor, who “still in the flower of youth … responds with courage” to Gabriel’s message. She gives us the secret of youth, he said, which is to “arise and go,” as she did to visit Elizabeth. From this response, the pope drew an audacious custom: “She really went quickly; she went in haste. And many times, I pray to Our Lady: ‘Hey, hurry up and resolve this problem!'”
He emphasized Mary as the great protector against the devil. He invited us to “take refuge under the mantle of the Holy Mother of God during times of spiritual turmoil. The devil cannot enter there because she is mother, and as a mother she defends.”
Mother of the suffering
Mary was at the heart of the pope’s well-known love for the poor, the abandoned and the sinful, and in this she was a model for the Church. It was Mary’s maternal instinct, in part, that brought her to the cross: a maternal instinct that “suffers every time a child goes through a passion.”
The pope invited the faithful to find Mary’s gaze: “Especially in times of need, when we are entangled in life’s knots, we rightly lift our eyes to Our Lady, to Our Mother. Yet first, we should let ourselves be gazed upon by Our Lady. When she gazes upon us, she does not see sinners but children. It is said that the eyes are the mirror of the soul; the eyes of Mary, full of grace, reflect the beauty of God, they show us a reflection of heaven.”
Thus it is that Pope Francis now rests under Mary’s gaze, close to this mother who was always so close to him.
