Pope Francis and the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, They greeted and hugged each other today after the canonization of Argentina’s first saintThis ended the electoral period in which the current president disqualified the Pope and described him as “the representative of evil on earth”.
After the Eucharist ended in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the Pope was brought in a wheelchair due to his knee problems to the place where the politician had watched the mass to his right in the front row in front of a kneeler.
At this moment Milei He shook her hand and hugged her.They both chatted and laughed for a few moments.
Against intolerance
At St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis presided over the canonization of the ordained laywoman María Antonia de San José de Paz y Figueroa, known as “Mama Antula,” and in his homily recalled the passage in which Jesus healed a leper, a depiction of the modern outcasts.
“Let’s not think that these are just things of the past. How many suffering people we find on the sidewalks of our cities! you even more! Even in our time there is so much marginalization, there are barriers that need to be broken down, “leprosy” needs to be cured,” he said.
In this sense, he called for “touching” the suffering people and not “reducing the world – as he said – to the area of our ‘well-being’.”
“In these cases we should be careful because the diagnosis is clear: it is “leprosy of the soul”; “A disease that desensitizes us to love and compassion and destroys us through the ‘burns’ of selfishness, prejudice, indifference and intolerance,” he warned.
A few minutes earlier, the Pope had pronounced the Latin formula with which he elevated to the altars “Mama Antula”, known for her laborious social and religious work in the Argentine lands of the 18th century before Spanish independence.
But also thanked him for his work in keeping the legacy of the Society of Jesus alive, to which the Pope himself belongs after he was ordered by King Charles III. was excluded from the Spanish crown.
Milei’s attacks on Pope Francis
This meeting between the first Argentine and Latin American pontiff and the far-right politician had raised great expectations, since the latter had attacked him heavily during the election campaign, describing him as a “representative of evil on earth”.
However, his attacks stopped after his arrival at the Casa Rosada last December and just yesterday he expressed on Radio Miter his desire for a “very fruitful dialogue” with the Pope, whom he now sees as “the most important Argentine in history” .
Bergoglio, for his part, always downplayed his words and even called him to congratulate him on his victory.
Today, in addition to the final hug, the two had planned a short and formal meeting before Mass in the sacristy of St. Peter’s Basilica, about which no information has yet been released.
However, the most anticipated moment will occur this Monday, at 9:00 a.m. local time (8:00 GMT). Francisco will receive you in a closed-door audience at the Apostolic Palace.
As the President has stated, one of the topics that will be discussed is the Pope’s possible trip to his home country, where he has not returned since his election in the 2013 conclave.
With my mind set on Argentina
Milei arrived in Rome from Israel, accompanied, among others, by the Secretary General of the Presidency, his sister Karina Milei and his Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Interior and Human Capital, as well as his Cult Secretary.
But even if I’m physically in the Eternal City, visiting the Colosseum or Michelangelo’s “Moses” or trading the “hot” rooms of the embassy for a hotel, His thoughts are across the ocean, in Argentina.
Last Tuesday, the president suffered a setback when the Chamber of Deputies did not approve the articles of his law “Fundamentals and starting points for freedom”, a project with which he wanted to deregulate the economy and reduce the weight of the state.