Reflecting On 'Modest And Simple' Pope Francis

Catholic evangelist Ricardo Grzona described  in an interview his long-time friend Pope Francis as “modest and simple,” but also decisive if but misunderstood by many.

Close to finishing high school in 1977 in his native Argentina, Grzona sought a deeper understanding of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola – founder of the Jesuits. “I found them to be a very interesting form of spirituality. In everything the Pope does, he should be understood as the Jesuit that he is, and by understanding the formation offered by St. Ignatius and the Exercises he wrote,” Grzona said. That year, Fr. Jorge Bergoglio S.J. – the future Pope Francis – was rector of the Colegio Máximo seminary near Buenos Aires. “When I arrived there, I asked who would lead the month of Spiritual Exercises. They told me that there was someone ‘very good and very severe, who will not praise you, but offer critiques so you can understand yourself. That person is Bergoglio.’” Grzona said.

“Father Bergoglio became my spiritual director. We became very good friends. Honestly, I thought I had a vocation to become a Jesuit. But he found something else in my life. He found that my most important work was to be an evangelist. So I asked him, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Yes, you could become a priest but there are few evangelists and even fewer lay evangelists. We want to tell the world that evangelization is in the hands of laypeople. We devote ourselves to sacramental life, but evangelization is the hands of laypeople.’”

Grzona became a lay evangelizer and founder of the Ramón Pané Foundation and Christonauts, which are dedicated to evangelization and leadership formation. “When St. Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises, he was a layman. He never thought to create anything new or different, but rather to preach on a spirituality that was concealed until he uncovered it,” Grzona said. “As for spirituality, it is not solely for priests and the religious. Spirituality is for everyone. As human beings, we need a connection to God. We Catholics understand this in many ways, with Jesus Christ, obviously.”

Father Bergoglio and leftists

In the 1970s, Argentina was in the midst of its “dirty war” when its military and intelligence services harshly responded to kidnappings, abductions, and bombings with torture and extrajudicial killing of hundreds of dissidents. Grzona said Pope Francis was no leftist during those years, noting he dismissed 70 seminarians from Colegio Máximo because of their involvement in the Theology of Liberation. According to Grzona, the erstwhile Fr. Bergoglio said: “‘Boys, you have to leave because this is a religious order, not a political party. We don’t get into politics.’”

“That is very notable because there are many who criticize him, especially in the United States, for being friendly to leftists,” Grzona said. For example, Fr. Bergoglio warned him against the Pastoral Institute of the Episcopal Conference of Latin America (CELAM) in Medellín, Colombia. “He said, ‘Be very careful because those coming from there become radical leftists who have done so much harm to the Church,’” Grzona recalled. “I emphasize that Bergoglio was never close to the left. Sadly, here they’ve made him out to be a puppet of the left. That’s what I see in major news centers, some Catholic in their own way, which criticize the Pope,” Grzona said, pointing out that Francis recently criticized Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, which has since broken off diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

Traditional Latin Mass controversy

When asked about papal restrictions on the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (Traditional Latin Mass), Grzona answered, “We must be frank about this. Bergoglio is not conservative in the sense of clerical apparel, birettas, et cetera. He is conservative of the Gospel. He wants to preserve the Gospel, thepurity of the Gospel, and simplify things.” 

“We often understand that the most conservative groups are those who want Mass in Latin and wear gold-embroidered fiddleback chasubles, and the pontifical Masses by bishops wearing gloves and all that stuff. Obviously, that was very important in the Middle Ages, but several ages of history have passed since then for us to continue thinking this is what it means to be Catholic. That’s to say, among the conservative groups here, one even sees women still wearing veils at Mass,” he said. “Jesus said one thing: You will know you are my disciples if you love each other,” Grzona said. “There are some here and there who say that the Mass should be said in Latin. Well, the Pope is saying, ‘Look, we should be more balanced and uniform, and we should return to the message of the Gospels.”

“Perhaps I am going off topic with what I am saying, but those types of traditions are not essential to the Catholic faith. When one receives Communion, you should communicate with all the devotion required to receive the Body of Christ. That’s why we have our catechesis, our preparation. Everything done during the Eucharist is directed at that moment, but there is no less devotion by receiving it in the hand or the mouth, or if I receive standing up or sitting down.”

“Which is what Pope Francis has always said and has said to me and I have personal recordings of him, where he tells me, one should have the Bible in hand, but it has to be transferred to the heart, which is the interior of our life, and not only to the mind. And that is why he always reminds us of this Lectio Divina method as being very important….So, I know Pope Francis as a very upright person, I mean, severe in the sense that he doesn't like half measures.”

Living as he preaches

Grzona recalled that as the new archbishop of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis declined to live in the official residence an hour from the city center. According to Grzona, he instead used a small cell at the archdiocesan headquarters downtown, close to the seat of civil government. Grzona recalled that Bergoglio said, ‘I’m a Jesuit, I know how to live by myself, so don’t worry about me.’” Grzona once saw Archbishop Bergoglio personally collecting mail at the front door of the headquarters. Apparently happy to see him, Bergoglio invited Grzona in for coffee. “So, he took in my colleague and me and made coffee, served it, and washed the coffee cups. In other words, the simplicity with which that man lives is truly moving. I’m not saying that he lives badly: to the contrary, he lives without attachments. He needs to sleep and has a bed; he doesn’t need anything else.”

“He is someone who truly lives by what he preaches…it’s something that’s priceless.”

The Pope’s humanity

For Grzona, Pope Francis’ refusal to live in the papal apartments is also evidence of modesty. Grzona said that since the Pope began residing at Casa Santa Marta, a hotel for those on Vatican business, Francis “has simplified everything.” “Everything is simpler, more homey and with fewer exotic dishes. The food is very good but not luxurious,” Grzona said. “When I was with a colleague, with my own eyes I saw the Pope put a plate of vegetables and a bit of meat into the microwave to warm it. I told my colleague, ‘Would you’ve believed me if I told you this?’ and he said, ‘No, not even if you told me would I have believed.’” “The man is modest, simple. He doesn’t cause any division, but many who hear him have other opinions. Well, I don’t want to defend him just because he’s my friend; there are many things he says that I still don’t understand. Now that he is bishop of Rome and supreme pontiff of the Church, he says many things that I have to read over and over in order to understand the Jesuit mentality, which asks more questions than providing answers…Isn’t that typical of Jesuits?” Grzona said. 

“He looks and you know that he understands you because his gaze goes to your very depths. When he looks at someone, he knows that person, and that is why the motto of his episcopacy, which has to do with the calling of St. Matthew, is ‘He looked at him with compassion.’ That’s what Jorge Bergoglio –Pope Francis – does when he looks into your eyes. He looks at you with God’s compassion and you feel loved but with the assurance that he is speaking with a father’s authority,” he said. “So these things that the Pope has are gestures of humanity that are rarely seen, because they are encircled by a very small circle of people.”

The Pope as administrator

Grzona said the Pope has not spoken to him about Argentinian Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who was convicted of sexually assaulting two seminarians and is still awaiting a canonical tribunal, or Fr. Marko Rupnik S.J., who was briefly excommunicated for the ecclesiastical crime of absolving an accomplice in sexual misconduct. “What can he do when these are cases about others? He did act forcefully in the very serious case of the nuncio [former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski] in the Dominican Republic …So, he can make a decision without hesitation,” Grzona said.

Regarding the case of Cardinal Giovanni Becciu, Grzona said that when the prelate came to report on canonizations, the Pope said, “‘Look, we’re not going to talk about that, we’re going to talk about this.’ And he brought out some financial reports, and said, ‘As of now, you are no longer the prefect of the Dicastery for the Cause of the Saints.’ He did not hesitate to tell someone that because the Pope makes things right.” Francis had made Becciu a cardinal in 2018, but Becciu resigned in 2020 after being implicated in a financial corruption scandal. A trial against him began in a Vatican court in 2021, being the first cardinal to face such a tribunal, and he most recently testified in March of this year.

“He takes into account all the great details of the world and he takes into account the smallest details,” Grzona said finally of his friend Pope Francis.