{"id":20868,"date":"2025-05-06T16:34:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T23:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/?p=20868"},"modified":"2025-05-06T19:25:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T02:25:39","slug":"he-had-our-lady-in-his-heart-sister-ana-rosa-sivori-fma-recounts-the-devotion-of-her-cousin-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/2025\/05\/06\/he-had-our-lady-in-his-heart-sister-ana-rosa-sivori-fma-recounts-the-devotion-of-her-cousin-francis\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He Had Our Lady in His Heart.\u2019 Sister Ana Rosa Sivori, FMA, Recounts the Devotion of Her Cousin Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"

(ANS – Vatican City)<\/strong>\u00a0– The origin of the Pope\u2019s bond with Our Lady\u00a0Salus Populi Romani<\/em>\u00a0and his ability to empathize with the most suffering is presented in the testimony of his cousin, a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians (FMA) and missionary in Thailand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sister Ana Rosa Sivori is a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, a missionary for sixty years in Thailand. On April 26, she was among the 250,000 who came to St Peter’s Square to pay their last respects to Pope Francis, her cousin. \u2018My mother and his father were cousins, so we are second cousins. Our families have always been very close. My father had a special affection for him and always said he would become Pope,’ Sister Sivoir says, going back to the days when she still lived in Buenos Aires. I take the opportunity to ask her if she knows where Pope Francis\u2019 devotion to the icon of Mary\u00a0Salus Populi Romani<\/em>, which we have seen in recent years so central to his faith, comes from. She tells how devotion to Our Lady was already a clearly rooted trait in the life of the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis\u2019 devotion to Our Lady<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Devotion to Our Lady runs in the family. Father was a migrant and had left Italy. Grandma Rosa had stayed at home with them and it was she who put the love and devotion for Our Lady in the hearts of us grandchildren. He, my two brothers, and I were all baptised in the basilica of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice. And that is the place where he would go every 24th of the month: he would climb the steps leading to the statue of Mary Help of Christians, sit there and pray alone.\u2019 \u2018Then for a year,\u2019 Sister Ana Rosa continues, \u2019Jorge Mario went to live with the Salesians when his mother was sick. He would ask Our Lady for anything and tell people to pray to Mary, because Mary would act and help. He had Our Lady in his heart.\u2019 Until his final trip to St Mary Major, which so often welcomed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always close to everyone<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis\u2019 ability to relate has certainly not gone unnoticed in these years of his pontificate: an uncommon ability to keep people in mind and at heart and to make himself present. \u2018He did not have a hot temper like the young people of today. He always tried to help his neighbor, whoever this was. He was always close to those who were suffering and empathized with the poor, the suffering, the sick. He wanted to get close to everyone, everyone,\u2019 recalls the nun speaking of the years before the pontificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The apostolic journey to Thailand<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November 2019, Pope Francis made an apostolic journey to Thailand. On that occasion he asked the Apostolic Nuncio to have his cousin by his side: \u2018I do not know why he wanted me to be close to him. Perhaps being a distant Buddhist nation, speaking another language, it gave him comfort to have me near him.\u2019 In Thailand, a Buddhist-majority country with a small Catholic community of about 400,000 people corresponding to 0.5 per cent of the population, the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, the Institute to which Sr Sivori belongs, run six schools. The smallest has 1,500 students, the largest over 3,000. \u2018Parents,\u2019 explains the missionary, \u2019want to give their daughters a good education and so they choose Catholic schools even if they are Buddhist. Going back in memory to the days of the apostolic journey, she recalls the simplicity of Francis: \u2018He behaved in the same way with everyone, Buddhists, Catholics, young people, authorities. He spoke of unity, of brotherhood, of Catholics and Buddhists working together, and this was much appreciated by the local people who still remember him. At the news of his death, they had a big ceremony in Thailand to commemorate him’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mutual emotional bond<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The communication between the Pope and his cousin continued in a constant way: \u2018Every time I wrote to him, he wrote back and often sent me packages of books in English for priests and religious. Once, when I was ill, he called me. We used to talk every time I went back to Argentina: from Thailand I would always choose a flight that passed through Rome and I would stop here on the way there and back. In those meetings he would always ask me about how things were going in Thailand, the relationship between us Catholics and the Buddhists, and the situation of our schools’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He will do even more from Heaven<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The news of Pope Francis\u2019 death reached Sister Sivori on the evening of Monday 21 April and it came as a shock to her: she had seen him feeling better on Easter morning and, a little like everyone else, had not expected his death the next day. Arriving in Rome on the evening of April 23, she spent the whole day with him on the 25th: \u2018From 9 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, I sat beside him, praying, talking, crying. I know he listened to me; I talked as if he were still sitting there beside me\u2019. I ask Sr Sivori what is the legacy his cousin left her: \u2018To be with all those in need, to live brotherhood, to reach the heart of all, no matter what religion they are. This is what he wanted, this is what he did and this is what he now asks of us\u2019. And she concludes: \u2018I believe he will do much more from heaven than he was able to do on earth\u2019.
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(ANS – Vatican City)\u00a0– The origin of the Pope\u2019s bond with Our Lady\u00a0Salus Populi Romani\u00a0and his ability to empathize with the most suffering is presented in the testimony of his cousin, a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians (FMA) and missionary in Thailand. Sister Ana Rosa Sivori is a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, a missionary for sixty years in Thailand. On April 26, … Continuar leyendo \u2018He Had Our Lady in His Heart.\u2019 Sister Ana Rosa Sivori, FMA, Recounts the Devotion of Her Cousin Francis<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":20870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[299562,516714022],"tags":[35890],"class_list":["post-20868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holy-father","category-salesian-world-news","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/6f9dbab6614d949dae45fa003f242ca2_xl.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-5qA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10336596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20868"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20909,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20868\/revisions\/20909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}