The Hidden Charity Guarded by Silence
Lucio Brunelli - On April 23, 2025, reflecting on a conversation from 2001, a Uruguayan friend described an unconventional cardinal: he rose before dawn to spend the early hours in prayer, owned no car or driver, traveled around Buenos Aires by public transportation, and was a friend to the curas villeros, parish priests who chose to live in the slums on the city’s outskirts. In Italy, he was virtually unknown; no newspaper had ever mentioned him.
These early stories intrigued me, both as a journalist and as a Catholic. A few months later, my friend Gianni Valente, who had reported on Argentina for 30Days magazine and interviewed the cardinal of Buenos Aires, confirmed and enriched these accounts with further details.
It was Gianni who introduced me to Bergoglio during one of his visits to Rome for the World Synod of Bishops in October 2005, exactly 20 years ago.
At dinner at Gianni’s home with his wife, Stefania, the cardinal shared stories about a childhood friend who had become a prostitute and was now gathering former colleagues in church, asking “Father Bergoglio” to celebrate a monthly Mass for them. He also spoke of Father Pepe, a young priest who had rediscovered his vocation and later became a parish priest in a villa miseria (slum).
I had expected a stern, monkish figure before whom I would be tongue-tied; instead, I met a gentle, good-humored man with a rare ability to put others at ease. After dinner, before returning to his guesthouse on Via della Scrofa, he pulled me aside, saying, “I have something to tell you.”
I braced for a reprimand, knowing he hadn’t liked my article on the April 2005 conclave published in Limes. Instead, he looked at me earnestly and asked, “Lucio, will you pray for me?” I will never forget that look. It felt as though my response was, at that moment, the most important thing in the world to him. I stammered a yes, and he promised to pray for me always. From his expression, I knew he meant it.
I could not have imagined then that his request for prayers would become a hallmark of his pontificate. We began corresponding via email, I visited him in Buenos Aires, and when he came to Rome, we met at Gianni’s house or at the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, where Fr. Giacomo Tantardini, a vibrant disciple of Fr. Giussani, celebrated pre-festival Masses with hundreds of faithful.
In our letters, we shared reflections on Christianity and how faith could touch the human heart today—not through duty or reasoning, but through attraction.
Drawing on St. Augustine’s concept of the “loving attraction of Grace,” Bergoglio critiqued what he called “linear thinking,” which confined all reality, including faith, to rigid intellectual categories. “In this linear thinking,” he wrote, “there is no place for delectatio and dilectio, no place for wonder. And this is so because linear thinking proceeds in a direction contrary to grace… Delectatio and dilectio and amazement cannot be possessed: they are received, simply.” He cited the Gospel parable of the Pharisee and the publican: “The Manichean essence of the Pharisee leaves no gap for grace to enter; it is sufficient unto itself, it is self-sufficient, it has linear thinking. The publican, on the contrary, has a tensional thought that is open to the gift of grace; he possesses a consciousness that is not self-sufficient but deeply begging.” (Letter, January 30, 2007).
A Christianity of attractiveness and wonder. A Christianity of begging. This, he believed, was what the Church and the world needed—not sullen militants.
Bergoglio was uneasy with certain interpreters of Benedict XVI’s pontificate who reduced Christian witness to endless culture wars. Yet he held sincere esteem for Benedict and had voted for him in the 2005 conclave. In January 2013, I sent him a link to my documentary on Ratzinger, a fresh portrait that countered stereotypes of the “German shepherd.” He appreciated it, noting that it highlighted “his charity and meekness.” (Letter, January 17, 2013).
Less than a month later, Benedict’s resignation stunned the world. As a Vatican journalist, I sensed that an Italian pope was unlikely, as scandals damaging the Church were attributed, rightly or wrongly, to an Italian-led Curia. I considered Bergoglio’s election plausible, as he was the most European of Latin American cardinals. His speech at the General Congregations on March 9 had impressed many. When white smoke appeared on March 13, I was broadcasting live from St. Peter’s for my news program, struggling to contain my emotions.
I assumed our correspondence would end after his election. Instead, Francis reached out to me. We stayed in touch. The Bergoglio I knew was, above all, a priest and a pastor of souls. With a discretion he described as “a first form of charity,” he was present in both the happiest and most painful moments of my life. Once, after I confided a great sorrow, he had a book, Letters from the Tribulation, and an envelope filled with holy cards of St. Joseph and St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus delivered to my home the next morning.
I struggled to understand those who portrayed Bergoglio as a dangerous modernist. His faith was rooted in traditional piety: the Rosary, Eucharistic adoration, novenas to St. Thérèse. His pastoral care seemed equally traditional, in the spirit of great Jesuit missionaries, the Curé d’Ars, or Argentina’s Cura Brochero, who rode a mule for miles to reach the souls entrusted to him.
On a few occasions, I shared with Francis stories of suffering I encountered among ordinary people. He always responded—discreetly, away from cameras—with a phone call or handwritten note to console or strengthen their faith.
I can only imagine how many others he has supported with the same priestly heart over these 12 years—a hidden charity best left undisclosed. “Closeness, compassion, tenderness”: he often spoke of these as God’s way with humanity, an ideal the Church should emulate, leaving the door open to all: “Everyone, everyone, everyone!” If he read these lines, I suspect he’d laugh and say I’m making him out to be a saint. But saints are not perfect; they are real people, with mistakes, flaws, and sometimes tempers. Sinners touched by the Lord’s mercy.
For me, his most beautiful speech remains the one to inmates at Palmasola prison in Bolivia on July 10, 2015: “Who is in front of you? You might ask yourself. I would like to answer the question with a certainty from my own life, with a certainty that has marked me forever. The one who stands before you is a forgiven man. A man who has been and is saved from his many sins. And that is how I present myself. I do not have much to give you or offer you, but what I have and what I love, yes, I want to give it to you, I want to share it: it is Jesus, Jesus Christ, the mercy of the Father.”
On a few occasions, I expressed puzzlement about some of his choices, particularly in communication. He had a way of making you feel free to voice disagreements. I don’t know if he was as patient with others, but he always thanked me for my critiques.
In a 2016 interview with Paolo Ruffini for Tv2000, he told us he preferred detractors to flatterers: “I have an allergy to flatterers. It comes naturally to me, it’s not a virtue. Because to flatter another is to use a person for one’s own purpose, hidden or not… The detractors speak ill of me, and I deserve it, because I am a sinner: that’s how I come to think. But don’t you deserve it because of what they accuse you of? No. However, maybe for something else that he (the detractor) doesn’t know.”
We exchanged brief messages in recent months. I was struck by the lucidity, passion, and courage with which he denounced the cruelties of the wars in Ukraine and the Holy Land, even at the risk of seeming unpopular or provoking ire. He was deeply free.
On January 20, already suffering from the bronchitis that led to his hospitalization at Gemelli, he confided his desire to visit Gaza for a pastoral visit to the small Catholic community, with whom he had been in constant contact since the Israeli bombings began. The image of the Pope, in a wheelchair amid war’s rubble, would have been a powerful gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people. “That would be a good thing,” he wrote, adding, “I will talk about it with the Secretariat of State to ‘probe’ it.” His worsening health likely halted any plans, and political obstacles would have made the trip nearly impossible anyway.
Still, the thought of a nearly 90-year-old, ailing pope yearning to be physically present with the people of Gaza—as he had been with families of Israeli victims of the October 7 massacres and those kidnapped by Hamas—is profoundly moving. It reflects the compassion for humanity that mirrors Christ’s, which Francis sought to embody as a humble witness.
The author has not revised the text translation. The article appeared on the “Osservatore Romano”.
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