A wonderful and unexpected meeting between a 95-year-old cloistered Sister and the Holy Father took place on Sunday, 6 April, in San Pietro.
Francesca Battiloro, Sister of the Order of the Visitation of Santa Maria (the “Visitandine”) who entered the convent at the age of 7 years thanks to a special dispensation and then take vows at 17, had expressed the desire to be able to cross the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica, arriving on pilgrimage from Naples, the city where she lives, to Rome.
Given its fragile health conditions, her wish was fulfilled by the Embassy of the Order of Malta to the Holy See which, together with the Confreres of the Delegation of Naples, took care of every aspect of the delicate pilgrimage which was unexpectedly crowned by the demonstration that the Lord hears the prayers of the humble, and that good and generous hearts can do miracles.
Sister Francesca, in a wheelchair and with vision problems, who in her prayers had asked to meet the Pope, was praying at Saint Peter in front of the tomb of the Apostle when Pope Francis, on his first public exit from Casa Santa Marta after being released from the Gemelli Hospital, stopped for a greeting and a short conversation. “I thought it would be impossible”, Sister Francesca exclaimed “but instead it was the Pope who came towards me”, “the two wheelchairs met” repeated the religious to the small Delegation of the Order of Malta that accompanied her on this exciting pilgrimage.