There is an Italian proverb: Chi fa da sé fa per tre… Someone who does a thing for himself, is as good as three people doing it for him. You do the job when you want it done and better than people who aren’t invested in your task.
Moreover, there are somethings that you really should not task out.
The newly elected Pope went back to his pre-conclave digs, packed his bag, paid his bill…
Now I read at CNA:
Pope Francis surprised the owner of a kiosk in Buenos Aires with a telephone call to send his greetings and explain that he will no longer need a morning paper delivered each day.
Around 1:30 p.m. local time on March 18, Daniel Del Regno, the kiosk owner’s son, answered the phone and heard a voice say, “Hi Daniel, it’s Cardinal Jorge.”
He thought that maybe a friend who knew that the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires bought the newspaper from them every day was pulling a prank on him.
“Seriously, it’s Jorge Bergoglio, I’m calling you from Rome,” the Pope insisted.
“I was in shock, I broke down in tears and didn’t know what to say,” Del Regno told the Argentinean daily La Nacion. “He thanked me for delivering the paper all this time and sent best wishes to my family.”
Del Regno shared that when Cardinal Bergoglio left for Rome for the conclave, he asked him if he thought he would be elected Pope.
“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.
“I told him to take care and that I would miss him,” Del Regno continued. “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.”
Before hanging up the phone, he added, the Pope asked him for his prayers.
Daniel’s father, Luis Del Regno, said they delivered the paper to the former cardinal’s residence every day.
On Sundays, he said, the cardinal “would come by the kiosk at 5:30 a.m. and buy La Nacion. He would chat with us for a few minutes and then take the bus to Lugano, where he would serve mate (tea) to young people and the sick.”
Among the “thousands of anecdotes” the elder Del Regno remembers is one involving the rubber bands that he put around the newspapers to keep them from being blown away when they were delivered to the cardinal.
“At the end of the month, he always brought them back to me. All 30 of them!”
He said he gets goose bumps whenever he thinks about Pope Francis’ simplicity.
“In June he baptized my grandson, it was an amazing feeling,” Del Regno said. “I know what he’s like. He’s one of a kind.”
Class.
I am not on board with the jettisoning of meaning-laden symbols, but this sort of thing is, simply put, classy.
This story reinforces the impression I had of Card. Bergoglio when he would stay at our residence (the one he went back to after his election) and would sit and talk with the stable residents. He was warm, affable, not talkative, but engaged and genuinely interested in you. And he very much dressed down rather than up. We can debate the merits of dress and the cardinalatial dignity, but … making the call himself to someone with whom he had that rapport… bring back the rubber bands from the paper to save money… classy.
I may have to start a new post category: Class Act!
On another note, however, I wonder if anyone reading from Argentina can tell us about the newspaper His Holiness chose to read: La Nacion. Newspapers generally have cultural and political orientations. What about La Nacion?
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