IT IS MONDAY, August 19, 2013. I have an appointment with Pope Francis at 10 a.m. in Santa Marta. I, however, inherited from my father the habit of arriving early for everything. The people who welcome me tell me to make myself comfortable in one of the parlors. I do not have to wait for long, and after a few minutes I am brought over to the lift. This short wait gave me the opportunity to remember the meeting in Lisbon of the editors of a number of journals of the Society of Jesus, at which the proposal emerged to publish jointly an interview with the pope. I had a discussion with the other editors, during which we proposed some questions that would express everyone’s interests. I emerge from the lift, and I see the pope already waiting for me at the door. In meeting him here, I had the pleasant impression that I was not crossing any threshold.
I enter his room, and the pope invites me to sit in his easy chair. He himself sits on a chair that is higher and stiffer because of his back problems. The setting is simple, austere. The workspace occupied by the desk is small. I am impressed not only by the simplicity of the furniture, but also by the objects in the room. There are only a few. These include an icon of St. Francis, a statue of Our Lady of Luján (patron saint of Argentina), a crucifix, and a statue of St. Joseph sleeping, very similar to the one which I had seen in his office at the Colegio Máximo de San Miguel, where he was rector and also provincial superior. The spirituality of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not made of “harmonized energies,” as he would call them, but of human faces: Christ, St. Francis, St. Joseph, and Mary.
The pope welcomes me with that smile that has already traveled all around the world, that same smile that opens hearts. We begin speaking about many things, but above all about his trip to Brazil. The pope considers it a true grace.
I ask him if he has had time to rest. He tells me that yes, he is doing well, but above all that World Youth Day was for him a “mystery.” He says that he is not used to talking to so many people: “I manage to look at individual persons, one at a time, to enter into personal contact with whomever I have in front of me. I’m not used to the masses.”
I tell him that it is true, that people notice it, and that it makes a big impression on everyone. You can tell that whenever he is among a crowd of people his eyes actually rest on individual persons. Then the television cameras project the images, and everyone can see them. This way he can feel free to remain in direct contact, at least with his eyes, with the individuals he has in front of him. To me, he seems happy about this: that he can be who he is, that he does not have to alter his ordinary way of communicating with others, even when he is in front of millions of people, as happened on the beach at Copacabana.
Before I switch on the voice recorder we also talk about other things. Commenting on one of my own publications, he tells me that the two contemporary French thinkers that he holds dear are Henri de Lubac, SJ, and Michel de Certeau, SJ. I also speak to him about more personal matters. He too speaks to me on a personal level, in particular about his election to the pontificate. He tells me that when he began to realize that he might be elected, on Wednesday, March 13, during lunch, he felt a deep and inexplicable peace and interior consolation come over him along with a great darkness, a deep obscurity about everything else. And those feelings accompanied him until his election later that day.
Actually I would have liked to continue speaking with him in this very personal manner for much longer, but I take up my papers filled with questions that I had written down before, and I turn on the voice recorder. First of all I thank him on behalf of all the editors of the various Jesuit magazines that will publish this interview.
Just a bit before the audience that the pope granted on June 14 to the Jesuits of La Civiltà Cattolica, the pope had spoken to me about his great difficulty in giving interviews. He had told me that he prefers to think carefully rather than give quick responses to on-the-spot interviews. He feels that the right answers come to him after having already given his initial response. “I did not recognize myself when I responded to the journalists asking me questions on the return flight from Rio de Janeiro,” he tells me. But it is true: many times in this interview the pope interrupted what he was saying in response to a question several times in order to add something to an earlier response. Talking with Pope Francis is a kind of volcanic flow of ideas that are bound up with each other. Even taking notes gives me an uncomfortable feeling, as if I were trying to suppress a surging spring of dialogue. It is clear that Pope Francis is more used to having conversations than to giving lectures.