By Angelo Amante
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Members of the 1.4 billion-member global Catholic community expressed grief on Monday at the death of Pope Francis aged 88, many praising him as a humble man who stood up for the marginalised.
At the Vatican, tourists and pilgrims there for Holy Week were dazed at the pontiff’s demise the morning after he had driven in his open-topped pope mobile through crowds cheering “Viva il Papa!” on Christianity’s holiest day.
“He appeared in public yesterday, looked healthy. I was so shocked, and sad of course,” said Father Bachai, a retired priest from the United States.
In Francis’ homeland Argentina, where he once served as the city’s archbishop, people woke up to the news.
“It hurts me like crazy, it hurts me a lot because I agreed – more than anything – with his words in support of bisexuals, and homosexuals,” said one Buenos Aires resident Nicolas Cordoba, noting his welcoming of LGBT people.
Dozens of churchgoers gathered for a Mass in Buenos Aires cathedral.
“The truth is, I wasn’t surprised. He was clearly very ill. I think he made a great effort to make it to Easter, which is the great festival for Christians,” Jorgelina Ventura, a 53-year-old lawyer, told Reuters.
Some of the faithful remembered Francis’ compassion towards those caught in war zones.
“The pope really cared about our country, Congo, with the repeated wars we are going through,” said worshipper Faida Nabintu at a church in the rebel-held city of Bukavu in conflict-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo.
At the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, David Sieben, 25, who recently completed a nine-month pilgrimage from Germany, said he hoped Francis’ successor would persist with his push to foster understanding between Christianity’s different branches.
“I pray that the next pope can continue in the footsteps of our beloved Francis and carry on a unity between Orthodox and Catholic,” Sieben said.
Peter Ladweg, taking a break from a run in Berlin, said he would like the next pope to be younger.
“I think it would bring a breath of fresh air to this whole episcopate and papacy,” he said.
‘ALWAYS CARES’
Ho, a Catholic in Seoul, was grateful for Francis’ prayers for South Korea after the Sewol ferry disaster that killed 304 people in 2014. “When the world is facing complex challenges, the Pope always cares about that, and I always feel deepest gratitude in my heart for him,” he said.
Beata Wolska, a pensioner in Poland, said she admired Francis’s humility and his decision to be buried in a simple wooden coffin in a Rome basilica rather than in the Vatican.
“Holiness is about the way one lives, not about what one thinks of oneself,” Wolska said.
Rosane Ribeiro in Rio de Janeiro described Francis as unique and extraordinary. “As a priest, he got up every day to pray for the world,” she said. “He was simply a 10, and died at a marvellous and beautiful time (Easter), worthy of him.”
Rosemary Mushayi, a worshipper in Nairobi, Kenya, said he was a pope who struck a chord with people from other faiths.
“He was a man who reached out to the whole world, not just Catholics. He was a man who had a heart for the weak and the poor,” she said.
At noon in Rome, bells tolled at St Peter’s Basilica and a silence descended on the crowd.
“We saw him here, he was just driven by in the car,” said Letizia Bartocci, who works in a jewellery shop near the square. “It was shocking news this morning.”
(Reporting by Angelo Amante in Rome, Miguel Lo Bianco and Juan Bustamante in Buenos Aires, Victoire Mukenge and Cooper Inveen in Bukavu, Kuba Stezycki and Malgorzata Wojtunik in Warsaw, Sergio Queiroz in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Charlie Devereux;Editing by Keith Weir, Peter Graff and Andrew Cawthorne)
