STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
By his own request, the funeral of Pope Francis will be kept comparatively simple. It is still a ritual, unfolding over many days. He is, after all, a pope. And the preparations begin today, when his body is to be placed in a coffin as family members attend.
We're hearing many voices about the pope's legacy, and that includes a voice that many Americans know well. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli covered events in Rome, including a succession of popes across four decades. So when we heard of the pope's death, we called Sylvia to ask what she thought.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: I was frankly stunned this morning when I saw the - two minutes after the email came from the Vatican press room, Papa Francisco é morto this morning at 7:30. It was really quite stunning. The reason I say it's stunning - because in the last few days, Pope Francis had surprised many people by coming out, even though he was convalescing, but he made several appearances - surprise appearances, many of them. And just yesterday, just before the Easter Mass was celebrated in St. Peter's Square, he actually even received, for a very few - very briefly, he had a meeting with JD Vance. And then he appeared in St. Peter's Square for the Mass. He said just a few words, but his homily - his speech - was his message - I should say, the message to the city and the world, as it's known on Easter Day, was read out, but - and it was an extremely forceful one. But we - certainly, I was very surprised.
INSKEEP: Yeah. He's one of these figures that we feel we know him, even if we never met him because he was so present in the media on television and elsewhere and because he was just that - had that kind of touch. But you actually did meet the pope. What was he like in person?
POGGIOLI: Well, yes, I did. I did several - I went on several trips with Pope Francis on the papal plane. And the very first one I did in 2015 was to Cuba first, and then the United States. And there's this sort of practice as all the Vatican reporters following the Vatican on board. And the pope, Francis, would come and meet each one of us and say hello. Everybody would, you know, say a few words with him. And when he came, I really - I was - you know, I was at a loss for words at first, but then I said to him, you know, you and I have something in common. And he turned and looked at me, and I said, yes, both your parents and my parents were Italian, and they were anti-fascists and had to leave Italy - his grandparents in the 1920s, my parents at the late 1930s. And so he really connected on this. We had this connection about our common past.
And then he told me a story, which at the time, I don't think he - many people had known. He told me that when his grandparents were about to leave Italy for Argentina, they had bought tickets on a ship for a ship's passage, and then for some reason, they couldn't take that trip. And that boat, just a month or two later, was shipwrecked off the coast of Brazil. So that was sort of a surprising thing that he told me. But he had a really - I don't know what to call it. It's a bit banal, but say, a common touch, a very - he was very personal. He was very - it was easy to talk to him. Let's put it that way.
INSKEEP: We've heard other guests this morning say that what was special about him was the way that he would relate to the individual, even if he did not necessarily change church theology. The teachings, the official teachings of the church, there was a difference in approach. Part of it, I think, comes from the personal story that you just relate to, that he was - he came from a family of immigrants. That he had - his family had a refugee background of sorts, and that seems to relate to his policies and so forth. I do want to note, though, that he also changed, if not the theology, the personnel of the Catholic Church during this dozen years. And I guess now people that he appointed will be involved in choosing his successor. How does that go?
POGGIOLI: Well, in fact, he has appointed something like two-thirds or - I'm not sure now, two-thirds or three-quarters of the voting-age cardinals who will elect his successor. And what he's done - not only was he the first Latin American pope, the first Jesuit pope, the first pope - non-European pope in some 2,000 years, he has definitely opened up the College of Cardinals globally. He has appointed Catholic cardinals from parts of the world that had never been represented in history at the Vatican.
So now what happens is, when the - these College of Cardinals, these 100-plus cardinals meet in Rome, probably within the next week or so, many of them don't know each other. They - there's no personal sort of connection. So it's going to be interesting to see - you know, it's all bets are off of who the next pope could be. There's no real favorites at this point.
INSKEEP: NPR's Sylvia Poggioli, a voice many of us know and a voice I definitely wanted to hear on this story. Sylvia, thanks so much for your insights. Good to hear from you.
POGGIOLI: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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