The owner of his local newspaper kiosk was amazed to receive a
telephone call from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who was archbishop of
Buenos Aires until being elected pontiff last week.
At first Daniel Del Regno thought it was a prank call, perhaps made
by a friend trying to pull his leg.
The Pope, calling from the Vatican just five days after his
surprise election, had to insist that it was really him.
"Seriously, it's Jorge Bergoglio, I'm calling you from Rome," he
said during the call earlier this week.
Francis, the first Pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit
pontiff, asked Mr Del Regno to cancel the delivery of his daily
newspaper as he would not be returning to Argentina any time
soon.
"I was in shock, I broke down in tears and didn't know what to
say," Mr Del Regno told La Nacion, an Argentinean daily. "He
thanked me for delivering the paper all this time and sent best
wishes to my family." The kiosk owner said that he had asked the
then Cardinal Bergoglio, on the eve of his departure for Rome to
take part in the secret conclave process that has elected Popes for
centuries, how he rated his chances of being chosen as the
successor to Benedict XVI.
"He answered me, 'That is too hot to touch. See you in 20 days,
keep delivering the paper.' "And the rest is, well, history," he
said.
The Argentine cardinal had so little expectation of being chosen
Pope by his 114 fellow cardinals that he had booked a return ticket
from Rome to Buenos Aires and was expecting to lead Easter services
in the city.
"I told him to take care and that I would miss him," said Mr Del
Regno. "I asked him if there would ever be the chance to see him
here again. He said that for the time being that would be very
difficult, but that he would always be with us." Mr Del Regno said
that he or his father would deliver a newspaper each morning to the
cardinal's modest apartment in Buenos Aires and that on Sundays he
would drop by the kiosk to buy La Nacion.
Mr Del Regno's father, Luis, said the future pope was well known
for his parsimonious ways. Every newspaper that was delivered to
him had a rubber band around it to stop it flapping in the wind.
"At the end of the month, he always brought them back to me. All 30
of them!" the kiosk owner said.
On Friday the Pope addressed foreign ambassadors and diplomats
accredited to the Holy See, explaining that he had taken the name
Francis in honour of St Francis of Assisi, who loved the poor.
He appealed for rich countries to do more to help the poor and
marginalised. "How many poor people there still are in the world!
And what great suffering they have to endure!" he said during his
address, delivered in Italian.
He said the fact that he comes from South America but has Italian
origins – his parents left the country in the 1920s - will help him
build bridges in the world. He said he wanted to forge better
dialogue with Islam.
"One of the titles of the Bishop of Rome is Pontiff, that is, a
builder of bridges with God and between people. My wish is that the
dialogue between us should help to build bridges connecting all
people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an
enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and
embraced," he told the diplomats in the Vatican's frescoed Sala
Regia or Regal Room.
Francis also repeated calls for greater protection of the
environment, "which all too often, instead of using for the good,
we exploit greedily, to one another's detriment."