He Had Our Lady in His Heart

“He Had Our Lady in His Heart”

Sr. Ana Rosa Sivori, FMA, recounts the devotion of her cousin Francis

Photo © Vatican Media

(ANS - Vatican City – May 6, 2025) – We present the testimony of the Pope’s cousin, a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians and missionary in Thailand concerning the origin of his bond with Our Lady Salus Populi Romani and his ability to empathize with the most suffering.

Sr. Ana Rosa Sivori is a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian sister), a missionary for 60 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. “My 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,” Sr. Sivori says, going back to the days when she still lived in Buenos Aires. I take the opportunity to ask her whether she knows where Pope Francis’s devotion to the icon of Mary Salus Populi Romani comes from, which we have seen in recent years so central to his faith. She tells how devotion to our Lady was already a clearly rooted trait in the life of the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Francis’s devotion to our Lady

“Devotion 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 baptized 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.” “Then for a year,” Sr. Ana Rosa continues, “Jorge 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.” Until his final trip to St Mary Major, which so often welcomed him.

Always close to everyone

Francis’s 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. “He 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,” recalls the nun speaking of the years before the pontificate.

The apostolic journey to Thailand

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: “I 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.” In Thailand, a Buddhist-majority country with a small Catholic community of about 400,000 people (0.5 per cent of the population), the Salesian Sisters run 6 schools. The smallest has 1,500 students, the largest over 3,000. “Parents,” explains the missionary sister, “want 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: “He 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.”

A mutual emotional bond

The communication between the Pope and his cousin continued in a constant way: “Every 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.”

He will do even more from Heaven

The news of Pope Francis’s death reached Sr. Sivori on the evening of Monday, April 21, 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: “From 9:00 in the morning to 5:00 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.” I ask Sr. Sivori what legacy his cousin left her: “To 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.” And she concludes: “I believe he will do much more from heaven than he was able to do on earth.”