He introduced himself as a brother, a son of immigrants, a neighbor from beyond our southern border.
He said he wanted to urge our politicians to remember the country’s founding principles, and encourage them to protect our families and our earth from an uncertain future.
In a country where Christianity often comes wrapped in an American flag, he said that we are better when we work together, when we don’t set aside our differences but celebrate them — wherever we are from, whatever God we worship.
He said he wanted to meet us, finally, to look into our eyes and share our struggles. And so he did — this man whose mantra is the “culture of encounter.”
For six days it seemed the earth tilted toward the man wearing the simple white cassock and the Mona Lisa smile. Wherever he went in Washington, New York and Philadelphia, we eddied and pooled around him, cries rising from the crowd as he approached.
In Washington, he shook hands with our President, stood silent through our pomp or showy sense of history. And then, in a soft, grandfatherly voice, he reminded our Congress that history speaks not only through the perfect and the proud, but also through the flawed and the humble.
He drew tears from our lawmakers, not once but twice.
And one of the nation’s most powerful men relinquished his power the day after meeting him.
He went straight from the halls of power to a homeless shelter, where few cameras or cares ever go, He blessed their meals, saying that before God, there are no rich or poor. There are only sons and daughters.
From Washington, he flew to New York, where he hit the city’s cultural icons with the speed of a tourist on a tight budget and the stamina of a man 40 years younger.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Central Park. The United Nations. Madison Square Garden.
(An exhausted journalist asked a papal aide about this boundless energy. It comes from outside, the aide admitted, from the people he meets and the God he worships.)
At ground zero, a sacred and scarred site where words rarely suffice, he somehow found the right ones. We must never forget the many victims murdered on that day, he said. But we must also remember the spirit of solidarity that rose from the city in the many pained days that followed, when we cared for each other, if only for a while, as though we were brothers and sisters.
For all the care he took with his words, he was most energized when he went off-script:
Cupping his ear to encourage Harlem schoolchildren to sing a little louder …
… using complicated geometry (polyhedrons, Pope Francis?) to illustrate a point about globalization, that all parts — all people — are equidistant from the center …
… admitting, at a meeting dedicated to transmitting Catholic truths about the perfect family, that there is no such thing. Plates fly and children cause headaches and mothers-in-law … well, don’t get him started on that.
On the last day of his visit, in Philadelphia, a city still reeling from a clergy sexual abuse scandal, he met with survivors, apologizing for the unforgivable and pledging to punish the guilty.
“God weeps,” he said, after hearing their stories.
Later that day, he went to another place of pain, a Philadelphia prison. We all have dirty feet, stains on our souls, said the man in the clean white cassock.
But we keep walking.
And they walked, as well, to see him.
The 88-year-old grandmother who left a short note on the kitchen table:
“I went to see the Pope,” she said. “This is my special pilgrimage.
The families caring for sick children who needed a spiritual shot in the arm. The priests who wanted to see their humble Holy Father. The immigrants who hear echoes of their voice in his softly accented Spanish.
The Pope’s people.
After a summer of racial injustice and riots, a season of political scapegoating and talk of building walls, he came to build a bridge — to be a bridge.
And he was. For at least these six days, he brought our messy multitude together: singing, dancing, laughing, crying, hoping, praying.
Before he flew back to Rome, he blessed us. And he asked us, as he always does, to please pray for him.