Rome – In the masses in the housing projects of Rome and in the heart of their tourist district, the faithful prayed on Sunday for the Next conclave What will you choose Pope Francis ‘successor.
Either in the Concrete Church of the eighties of San Paolo Della Croce, together with a notorious public housing project, or facing the golden mosaics of the millennium in Santa María in Tretevere, the Catholics shared two main hopes for the future of the Church.
Young and old, Romans and migrants said they would like the next pontiff to make faith accessible to Those who are on the margins and help bring peace to a world that they see as full of dangers.
Michele Cofaro said he says that the next Pope “focuses on the poor, poverty, eliminates hatred, meanness and wars and reeduces young people … that they are getting lost totally.”
The Glass and Metalworker lived for the first time in Corviale projects on the other side of the street, a block of several -story gray housing that winds in a hill for more than 3,100 feet (1 km), when it was built in the early 1980s. He said that he knows first hand the reality of poverty, addiction and exclusion that continues to affect many of its residents.
“I come to trust a superior power, because of the things that I cannot solve,” said Cufo after Mass in San Paolo while tears sprouted in his eyes remembering Francisco’s reach.
The pontiff that deceased On April 21 at the age of 88, he visited the parish in 2018 and comforted a child worried about whether his recently deceased father would be in heaven.
“We need a Pope who comes to visit us, to see the situation,” said Ida Di Giovannantonio, who remembered having met Francis on that visit.
She said she cried every day when she moved to the projects four decades ago, when she was 40 years old, and she only felt safe going to the parish.
“It has been a place of refuge. The poor need cozy and love,” said Di Giovannantonio, who also volunteered in the Church Food Bank. On Sunday, a shopping cart was next to the entrance of the church with a sign that encourages the faithful to leave food donations.
Less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, but in a different socioeconomic world, in Santa María in the neighborhood of Riverside de Treserevere, Lisa Remondino said he hopes that the next Pope will continue Francis’s legacy. Helping migrants.
“I hope she is a cozy pope, and also a Pope who has the courage to fight for peace. It was the only voice we had against war, powerful and weapons,” said the master of kindergarten, who belongs to the Catholic beneficial organization Sant’Egidio who has worked closely with Francisco migrants and refugees.
One of the cardinals considered The main contestants To happen, the Reverend Matteo Zuppi of Rome, has served in various capabilities both in Sant’Egidio and Santa María, whose Foundation dates from the third century.
Outside, the porch decorated with old marble inscriptions and the swarm of tourists, Marta Finati said he hoped that the Church continued to respect the dogmas, but that it was also open to society in general.
The next Pope should adopt a moral and political leadership for peace that would also provide a “reference point” for non -Catholics, he added.
Hurrying to become an Altar server robe at Mass on Sunday afternoon in Santa María, Mathieu Dansoko, who came to Italy from Mali a decade ago, said that coming to church is “how to be with his family.”
“The next Pope should have the basic courage to take the most needy of the peripheries to the center,” he said.
Back on the periphery of Corviale, the pastor, Reverend Roberto Cassano, said that losing Francis was “a great blow” for his congregation because Pope Francis’s visit had “interrupted for a moment the marginalization of these people.”
“We need to return to God a little,” he added in the ordered rose garden between the Church and the housing block that packs in more than 1,500 families. “So much meanness, both selfishness, both selfishness is also the fruit of the lack of God’s presence in people’s life … there would still be different social problems, but a little less acute.”
At Sunday morning, several faithful stopped at the last bank to greet an occasional visitor: Cardinal Oswald thanks from India, who was in Rome for conclave meetings, although he had turned 80 years at the end of last year, he can no longer vote.
In the choice, each cardinal receives a “Holder” parish In Rome, and on Sunday many celebrated Mass at yours. In his homily, thanks mentioned the different legacies of the last three popes: the geopolitical impacts “that change the world” of San Juan II, the Benedict XVI scholarship and Francis’s pastoral care. He urged the more than 100 faithful to “pray that the Holy Spirit can give us a Pope who meets the needs of the times.”
Elisabetta Bonifazi, who finds his “reference point in San Paolo,” said “wars and contradictions”, the new Pope will need all the orientation and divine prayers.
“You will have to continue carrying this load forward,” he said. “We are at an extremely difficult time.”
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