The Great Reformer by Austen Ivereigh

Author:Austen Ivereigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627791588
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

SEVEN

GAUCHO CARDINAL

(2001–2007)

THE BUENOS AIRES evangelical pastors with whom he used to pray each month got to see their old friend Jorge Bergoglio in the Vatican about ten weeks after he was elected pope. It happened that Pastor Carlos Mraida of the Central Baptist Church, Pastor Norberto Saracco of the Pentecostal Evangelical Church, Pastor Angel Negro from the Christian Community, and Pastor Omar Cabrera of the Future Vision Church were all due to be in Europe at about the same time, and God clearly wanted Jorge Himitian of the Christian Community to join them, because the pastor managed to find the funds for the flight just in time.

The pastors greeted Pope Francis outside the Santa Marta with Argentine-style embraces and kisses. Francis laughed at Pastor Himitian’s greeting: “So you’ve managed to bring us to the Vatican after all!” Inside, they told him how amazing it had been in Argentina since his election: they had to pay to put Jesus Christ on the airwaves, but here was Francis putting Him out for free on all the big shows. They told him how there was a new openness now in the Argentine media, how journalists who had long said they were atheists and agnostics were all talking about what it meant to be Catholics and Christians; how suddenly it was OK to talk about Christian values.

Francis was the same old Jorge, says Himitian, yet he wasn’t. “What everybody had been talking about, the way he had become so effusive, so joyful—we had seen that side of Jorge for ourselves in our retreats, when he preached, but outside of those times he was a very serious man. But now, as pope, he was exultante (‘elated’) all the time, just as he had been with us.”

Inside the Santa Marta at the end of May, they prayed together, just as they used to in Buenos Aires. According to Himitian, Pastor Saracco said to Francis: “Jorge, let me share something with you. Last night I was praying about this meeting and I said, ‘Lord, if you have a word for Jorge, give it to me.’” In the evangelical and charismatic tradition, to ask in prayer for a word means to ask the Holy Spirit to inspire a person to turn to a particular chapter or verse in Scripture that has particular meaning for them at this time.

Saracco brought out his iPad and read from the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 1: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.… See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.

When Saracco—who had come to Rome from Buenos Aires via the United States—started reading the Jeremiah passage, Mraida and Himitian elbowed each other. Amazingly, Himitian had told Mraida he received the same word before setting off from Buenos Aires and even had exactly those verses printed out on a sheet of paper.

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