Pope Francis will spend this weekend in Asti, Piedmont, to meet his second cousins and celebrate the 90 years of cousin Carla Rabezzana on an unprecedented family trip to his grandparents’ land.
In the small town of Portacomaro, in the province of Asti and where she has lived since 2015, after being widowed, Carla Rabezzana get ready for days the arrival of his cousin “George”as they call Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, who will arrive this Saturday to celebrate his 90th birthday, which was on November 8th.
The pontiff is the son of Mario Bergoglio, first cousin of his mother Inés, and five other cousins and their families will also join this family lunch they will travel from Turin, Vaglierano and Tiglioleall the cities of Piedmont.
“I have long wanted to spend a few hours with my relatives in my family’s places. Before becoming a father, I used to go there often in the Asti area it was customary: when he arrived in Rome as provincial of the Jesuits of Argentina, or as archbishop to participate in a synod”, Francis explained in an interview this Friday with the Turin newspaper “La Stampa”.
And he adds: “Every time I went to Piedmont to visit my father’s cousins. With the older cousin, Carla, we often talk on the phone. Tomorrow (Saturday) we will meet together with five other cousins, and this fills me with joy“.
“Bagna cauda”
Francisco waits for his cousin to prepare the famous “bagna cauda”, one of his favorite Piedmontese dishes, a sort of garlic and anchovy sauce which is eaten with vegetables.
“For Saturday lunch, the other cousins and I will prepare some roasted meat and lots of vegetables, eats them a lot, especially from time to time, and then the bonet, the cocoa-based pudding typical of Piedmontese cuisine. we will eat the birthday cake on Sunday, at lunch with the bishop, after mass”, Carla revealed to the Vatican media.
Explain that to the father he often speaks “in Piedmontesebecause he is very attached to this land, which he considers his own, not just that of his parents, and he understands the dialect very well, since his grandparents only spoke dialect”.
“I’ll ask him about his knee”
“I’ll hug him first, because We haven’t seen each other for three years, since the end of 2019, before the pandemic, when I went with my family to the Vatican. And then we’ll chat, as at least we do once a month by phone, like relatives who love each other. I’ll ask him about his knee, which hurts now. He tells me when we talk on the phone,” adds Rabezzana.
On Saturday, Francisco will spend the whole afternoon with his relatives in a meeting totally privatewhile the following day, November 20, when the feast of Christ the King is celebrated, he will preside over the mass in the cathedral of Asti to “embrace the local community from which their parents left to emigrate to Argentina”, they explain from the diocese.
In June 2015 he had been on an official visit to Turin and on that occasion he was also able to embrace his family again.
The family tree
But since his election in 2013, the city council of Asti has insistently asked the Pope to return to the land of his grandparents with invitations as original as a bottle of Grignolinothe local wine, with a special label: “Ast t’aspeta a bras duert” (Asti awaits you with open arms).
According to the pontiff’s family tree reconstructed by the Municipality of Asti, the great-great-grandfather Giuseppe Bergoglio was born in 1816 in the town of Schierano, while the great-great-grandmother Gioacchino Maria, daughter of Antonio, was born in 1819 in Cocconato d’Asti.
The grandfather, Giovanni Bergoglio (1884) emigrated to Turin in 1906 and married Rosa Vassallo, originally from Piana Crixia (Liguria), while the father of the pontiff, Mario Bergoglio, was born in Turin in 1908, the family returned to Asti, where he opened a grocery store before emigrating to Argentina.
The pope’s father and mother, Regina Sivori, of Savona (Liguria), and the grandparents of the future pontiff left for Buenos Aires on February 1, 1929.
EFE extension
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.