ROME – Pope Francis and Argentine President Javier Milei, a populist politician and a blunt contrarian who has made derogatory remarks about the pontiff, had a warm encounter as Argentina’s first female saint was canonised at Mass on Sunday in the Vatican.
A former television pundit, Milei was elected president of Argentina in November. He drew global attention during his campaign for the language he used to describe Pope Francis, calling the pontiff an “imbecile,” a “communist” and a “filthy leftist” among other pejoratives.
In an interview shortly after Milei’s election, Pope Francis dismissed such inflammatory rhetoric, saying, “You have to distinguish a lot between what a politician says in the election campaign and what he actually does afterward, because then comes the moment of concreteness, of decisions.”
That moment came on Sunday, when the pope and president met for the first time in St. Peter’s Basilica for the canonization of Argentina’s first native saint, Maria Antonia of Saint Joseph de Paz y Figueroa, affectionately known by Argentinians as “Mama Antula”.
After greeting Milei briefly at the beginning of Sunday’s ceremony, Pope Francis met the Argentine president a second time, along with other government ministers, at the end of the ceremony. Milei broke protocol by hugging the Pope.
The two men are scheduled to hold a <a href="https://x.com/VaticanNews/status/1757044636453871913?s=20"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">formal meeting</mark></a> on 12 February at 9 a.m. at the Vatican, during which they are expected to discuss Argentina’s crippling economic situation and a <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-man-on-a-mission-pope-francis-has-ambitious-travel-plans-for-2024/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">potential papal visit to the country</mark></a> later this year.
Francis and Milei have already briefly discussed these issues in written exchanges and during an 8-minute phone call after Milei’s election in November 2024.
During that conversation, Pope Francis congratulated Milei for his victory and the two touched on Argentina’s decades-long economic crisis, with 40.1 per cent of the population living in poverty and with inflation rates standing at over 200 per cent, according to the government’s INDEC statistics agency.
Last month Milei wrote a two-page letter to the Pope thanking him for “your wise advice and wishes for courage and wisdom for me”, and expressing a desire that Francis visit their “beloved homeland”.
To tackle the country’s economic woes, Milei has already taken several dramatic and divisive steps, devaluing the peso by more than 50 per cent, cutting state fuel and transport subsidies, and rolling out a new reform bill touching on a variety of public and private issues, such as privatisation, the penal code, the status of soccer clubs and cultural issues.
Pope Francis in his homily for Sunday’s canonisation of Mama Antula decried attitudes that he said make poverty and injustice worse.
“Fear, prejudice and false religiosity are three causes of a great injustice,” Francis said. “They are three ‘leprosies of the soul’ that cause the weak to suffer and then be discarded like refuse.”
He cautioned believers against thinking these attitudes are “relics of the past”, and referenced the “many suffering men and women” they pass by each day.
“How many fears, prejudices and inconsistencies, even among those who are believers and call themselves Christians, contribute to wounding them all the more! In our time too, there are striking cases of ostracism, barriers needing to be torn down, forms of ‘leprosy’ to be cured,” he said.
Pope Francis said the problem arises when “we withdraw from others and think only of ourselves; when we reduce the world around us to the limits of our own ‘comfort zone;’ when we believe that the problem is always and only other people.
“In such cases, we need to be attentive, for the diagnosis is clear: a ‘leprosy of the soul:’ a sickness that blinds us to love and compassion, one that destroys us by the cankers of selfishness, prejudice, indifference and intolerance,” he said.
Focusing on Mama Antula, he praised the “hidden charity” she practiced, and discussed how healing is achieved by giving attentive closeness to those in need and “without fears and prejudices, leaving behind a dull and disembodied religiosity".
In addition to her charitable work with the poor and destitute, Mama Antula is also known for her promotion of the <a href="https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/what-are-the-spiritual-exercises/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Ignatian spiritual exercises</mark></a>, a retreat-based framework that gathers the prayers, meditations, reflections and directions of Ignatius Loyola
Born in Silipica, Santiago del Estero, in 1730, at the age of 15 she joined other boys and girls in assisting the Jesuits in giving the Ignatian spiritual exercises, forming a group called the “Beate” and wearing the black habit of the Jesuits. She took private vows and lived as a consecrated laywoman.
When the Jesuits were expelled from the Americas in 1767, she continued their work in their absence, giving retreats based on the spiritual exercises throughout Santiago del Estero and beyond, while also ministering to the poor and needy.
In 1780, she opened a house for the Ignatian spiritual exercises and gave retreats to thousands of people before passing away nearly 20 years later on 7 March 1799. Her cause for beatification was opened in 1905 at the request of the Argentine bishops. She was beatified in 2016.
Her 11 Feb. canonisation took place on the anniversary of the first Marian apparition in Lourdes.
Many believe that Mama Antula’s canonisation is a symbolic down payment on a papal trip to Argentina for Pope Francis, who has repeatedly voiced his desire to visit his native country. It would mark his first return trip since his election in 2013 and would be one of the most important international trips of his papacy.
Francis has said his visit, if it does take place, would happen in the second half of the year, either before or after his October Synod of Bishops on Synodality, though it remains in “parenthesis” as he navigates various health challenges that make lengthy international trips difficult.<br><br><em>Photo: Argentina's new president Javier Milei gestures at the crowd from a balcony of Casa Rosada Presidential Palace on his inauguration day in Buenos Aires, 10 December 2023. The libertarian economist was sworn in as Argentina's president following resounding election victory fuelled by fury over the country's economic crisis. (Photo by EMILIANO LASALVIA/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
