The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, arrived at the Vatican today, Sunday, where he attended the canonization of his country’s first saint, María Antonia de San José de Paz y Figueroa, “Mama Antula”, presided over by Pope Francis.
After the celebration of mass, in the Papal Chapel of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the pontiff and the Argentine president merged in an embrace, ending the electoral period in which the now president disqualified the pontiff, calling him “a representative of the evil on Earth.”
Once the Eucharist was over, the pontiff was taken in a wheelchair due to his knee problems to the place where the politician had followed the mass, to his right, in the front row in front of a kneeler. At that moment Milei shook his hand and gave him a hug, both of them talking between laughs for a few moments.
In his homily, Pope Francis recalled the passage in which Jesus healed a leper, a representation of the modern marginalized. “Let us not think that they are just things of the past. How many suffering people we find on the sidewalks of our cities! And how many fears, prejudices and inconsistencies, even among those who believe and profess to be Christians, contribute to hurting them even more! Also in our time there is so much marginalization, there are barriers to break down, ‘leproses’ to heal,” he said.
In this sense, he called to “touch” those people who suffer and not to “reduce the world into – he said – the precincts of our ‘being well’.”
Milei, from Israel, participated in the liturgy flanked by his sister and Secretary General of the Presidency, Karina Milei, his Foreign Minister, Diana Mondino; the head of the Interior, Guillermo Francos; that of Human Capital, Sandra Pettovello; the Secretary of Worship, Francisco Sánchez, and the ambassador to Israel, Rabbi Axel Wahnish..
The Argentine president arrived earlier at the Vatican basilica, wearing a suit and tie, and sat in the first rows, although some guests at the ceremony asked him to take photographs.
‘Mama Antula’, a consecrated laywoman from Santiago del Estero, was beatified in August 2016 after the Vatican recognized as her miracle the healing in 1900 of a nun of the Daughters of the Divine Savior, a congregation founded by her.
He is recognized for his arduous spiritual and social work in Argentina, founding in 1795 in Buenos Aires the Holy House of Spiritual Exercises, currently a historical monument of the country.