“I have lived too long with those who hate peace.”

That's the title of one of the chapters in the autobiography Francis published months ago. In fact, since they hated peace, they hated him; so much so, that they prayed for his quick death. That's why, last fall, he said goodbye to a group of Catalans who came to see him in Rome with a smile: "Pray for me, but in a good way, okay?" Francis, who no longer wished to live in the Apostolic Palace, will not be buried in the Vatican, like his predecessors, because the Vatican "is the home of my final service, not of eternity.

" He left it written that he would be buried in St. Mary Major, without pomp or catafalque, or a triple cypress coffin. A Pope who on his first day cleared the red shoes with a "carnival is over," who traveled to Mosul and Mongolia, who brought a family of Syrian refugees from Lampedusa to Rome, who asked that city churches be opened like Barcelona hospitals.



He left a testament that was sufficiently explicit about who his followers were and how they should be treated. Francis has become a moral counterweight to Trump's fear and darkness in the global battle for ideas, and now the battle will move to the conclave, because the new Pope will be a coveted prize. Four months ago, Francis appointed 21 new cardinals from Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Japan, the Philippines, Serbia, Brazil, the Ivory Coast, Iran, Canada, Australia, and Italy, informed by a thought by Gustav Mahler for which he had an understandable predilection: "Tradition is not the cult of things.

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