The keys to Francis' devotion to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore

Our Lady of the Snows is the original name that popular fervor gave to the papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major. Legend has it that the Virgin Mary showed a noble patrician the site where it was to be built through a miraculous snowfall in midsummer. Every year on August 5th, this miraculous event is recreated, causing a shower of white petals to fall from the roof of the church to the square, evoking the blanket of snow and the purity of Mary. It is the oldest Marian shrine in the West, the first place where Christians began to implore the intercession of the Virgin. Built by Pope Sixtus III between 432 and 440, after the definition of the dogma of the Divine Maternity, it features a peculiarity that could well have been a choice of Pope Francis: contrary to tradition, the apse faces west, so that the façade looks east, that is, toward the outskirts of the city.

The interest that the Feast of the Snows aroused in the Middle Ages made it a celebration of universal reach, promoted above all by the Franciscans who instigated the construction of numerous churches dedicated to this devotion. These churches preached the charisma of the poor man of Assisi, linked to a simpler, humbler life and service to the most disadvantaged. It also serves as a guide for the pontificate of Francis.

The structure of the Roman Sistine Chapel remains, whose appearance was already unrecognizable in medieval times due to the numerous architectural interventions. Most of these were intended to convert the church into a worthy funeral monument for the popes. The Basilica we can admire today was built under Clement IX, the last pope to be buried there, in 1669. A pope who is remembered for having been a patron of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whom he asked to finish the colonnade in St. Peter's Square in Rome and complement Santa Maria Maggiore with sumptuous domes. A collaboration that links this sanctuary to the Vatican, despite the four and a half kilometers of distance.

The Vatican archives abound with controversies concerning these monumental works by Bernini, whose desire for grandeur seemed to overwhelm even the popes. Construction was interrupted at various times, and the funds ended up being used to support congregations that helped the poor. An unfinished project, which did not lend itself to the architect's boasts, but which did not prevent it from being the largest and most important Marian church dedicated in Rome, not to mention the latter.

Seventeen centuries after its founding, Pope Francis left a testament that summarizes his life. There is only one will: the choice of burial place: outside the Vatican, close to Mary. A devotion that he has manifested throughout his papacy and which in this place brings together a network of charisms specific to his pontificate: affiliation with Mary, popular devotion, the Franciscan charism.

The will explains: "I request that my tomb be prepared in the niche of the side aisle, between the Pauline Chapel and the Sforza Chapel, of the aforementioned Papal Basilica." That is, next to the Salus Populi Romani, Our Lady of Tenderness and Consolation. It's not that the pope particularly desired a tomb in a monumental Baroque church; he doesn't even mention the fact that Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, celebrated his first Mass there. He simply wants to rest near the Marian icon he desired, expressly requesting the utmost simplicity: "The burial site must be in the ground; simple, without special adornments and with the sole inscription: Franciscus." No extensions, no special work.

A Jesuit who chooses to be called Francis says it all: he is a program in himself.

"I wish that my last earthly journey conclude precisely in this most ancient Marian shrine." A bond he had been forging since the beginning of his pontificate: his first request was to visit the Salus Populi Romani. A bond that grows stronger every day, a must-see before embarking on a trip and upon returning from it. More than a hundred visits in his twelve years of pontificate. Some claim that his devotion was born long before he was named pope.

This preference was publicly expressed during the Extraordinary Jubilee of 2016, when he chose this same basilica as his Holy Door. He also went there on March 15, 2020, during the lockdown, to implore the end of the pandemic. And since then, he has repeatedly prayed there for world peace.

Francis wasn't the Pope of the Guinness World, but he was one of the firsts, the Pope who arrived "from the end of the earth" on March 13, 2013. His first word from the balcony of the Loggia of Blessings, on the day of his election, was "Buona sera," "good afternoon": introducing himself as the neighbor next door would have done. A Pope who fought to the end to be an ordinary man—or, better said, authentic.

The man of borders, of the peripheries, of loving without limits, of being fearless, of being joyful, of making a mess. His approach, within the Church, seemed like a groping process. On the contrary, it was hand-to-hand with life, a daily touching of wounded flesh. No one has agreed with him on everything, but no one has found fault with him either.

The doctrine hasn't changed, the "what" hasn't changed. But he revolutionized the "how" of doing things. He introduced simplicity into a complicated world. With one motto: get out there. Move, always move. What's more: hurry up! Don't be "couch Christians." Aware that those who do nothing are never wrong. Until the last day. Easter, when, after the blessing of the Urbi et Orbe, he wanted to be among the people for the last time. The people, whom he loved one by one and to whom he wanted to say goodbye.

On Easter Monday morning, he died at home, a wish he had expressed to his doctors, along with the instruction that under no circumstances should he proceed with intubation or any treatment to prolong his life. The only thing he ever asked for was simply this: "Don't forget to pray for me."

When his accounts were opened, it was discovered that he had long ago designated his assets for prisoners, keeping only one hundred dollars for himself. Perhaps in this we can also read a red thread, discreet but firm, that links the place chosen by Francis for his burial with the last document he signed: the declaration of venerability of Antoni Gaudí, the architect of the unfinished temple that in his time was nicknamed the Cathedral of the Poor, an architect misunderstood by his own people and today the most famous - popularly speaking -, who had decided to live as a poor man among the poor and who dedicated the largest building on the entire Passeig de Gràcia to Mary.