Less known face of Pope Francis: “When he was coming to visit us, he washed his socks for the next morning. He was looking for his cardinal ring through his pockets.”

“In Rome he organized a lunch for us and arrived without a driver, dressed as a simple priest,” said the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the cousins ​​from a commune near Turin, Italy, who talk about how the Pope in the family was: careful, humorous and humble. Piedmont is the region from which he emigrated to Argentina the family of the one who would become Pope Francis.

For them it was always “Giorgio”, the cousin with whom they used to eat under the trees when they were children. “She used to come to visit Pratomorone, where I lived before I was getting married. Our grandparents were brothers,” says Delia Gai, born in 1937, like her husband, Franco Travo, in the kitchen of their tile, in the Asti region, not far from Turin, in the northwest of Italy.

Here came Pope Bergoglio for coffee on November 19, 2022, after having lunch with his other cousin, Carla Rabeszani, in Portocomaro, just under thirty kilometers.

“For lunch, we all did my best to prepare something. Before Giorgio became a pope, in Carla had his bedroom, where he could pray, while here, he was his jail,” Delia with nostalgia, pointing to the place where Bergoglio had settled on the occasion of that private, but also public visit, Civil protection, bishop, nationals and believers.

An event that remained printed in the local community, so much that, in November last year, this street, previously called Via Della Stazione, became via del Papa, with a statue dedicated to Holy Father right next to the roundabout.

The humor of the pope

“Not that he would have agreed with the idea of ​​the statue, but then he got to work,” says Delia, who keeps the image of his cousin as a simple and funny person. Her husband, Franco, intervenes: “Two years ago, in August, my wife and I celebrated the 60th anniversary of our marriage. When I told her on the phone, she said,” You haven't bored yet? “. “This was him,” continues his cousin: “When he was operated on the colon in 2021, he joked with us:” Now in the belly I have 47 stitches. Caesarean section, but without a child! “”. A spirit that never lost, as the telephone call to Carla Rabzzani demonstrates, which of the summers was the last to hear: “A few days ago I hated my luck in gypsum and said:” Glory the Lord that you did not break your head! But the voice was weak. “

The scene with the ring

For his appointment as a cardinal, they organized a family lunch for 28 people in the room next to it. Delia tells: “I had a beautiful party and then I went to Rome. We had to stay for two days, but instead I stayed for a week. One day he gave us a meeting at a restaurant. We were all there, but he did not arrive. Until he appeared in black, as a simple priest. I asked him where the ring was, and he had to look in his pockets to find him. “

Anecdotes

Indeed, the anecdotes are in accordance with that “Giorgio” who, when he went to visit, washed his socks in the evening the next morning. “Or he went down to the garden to take tomatoes or salad and eat them without seasoning them. He never spoke of what he was doing in the service of the poor.” But he was very careful about our stories. Our daughter Emma, ​​who left us five years ago with pancreatic cancer, wanted to visit him in 2019 Lunch, in Santa Marta, the Pope had poured something to drink.

Pope Francis died on Sunday at 88.