But then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, being frugal, would save the rubber bands and return them in a ball at the end of every month.

Guide Javier Cortese offered the anecdote while leading tours around central Buenos Aires, where the local government and private companies alike have capitalised on the popularity of Pope Francis.

Tour guides now take tourists to the most notable and mundane points — from his neighbourhood parish to the newspaper stand - visited by the pope during his life in Buenos Aires.

Cortese said the tours are nothing out of the ordinary, given the excitement in Buenos Aires over Pope Francis' unexpected election.

The idea for the tours "was hatched the same day" of the March 2013 election, he said.

The Buenos Aires government was quick to embrace Pope Francis' election; it investigated his past and put plaques at places like his childhood home.

Despite the early excitement, the tours in Buenos Aires may be running their course and, at some places, bring more bother than benefits. Continue reading.

Image: Javier Cortese, centre, leads tours of sites important or notable during the life of Pope Francis CNS/David Agren

Specifically, both men have illuminated from different perspectives the relation between the primacy of God's offering of grace in the liturgy of the altar and subsequent encounters of man and neighbor in the liturgies of love in everyday life. While Pope Benedict most often stressed the encounter of God with man—which then calls for and makes possible authentic encounters with neighbor—Pope Francis has stressed man's interactions with each other, which allows us to bring Christ to a world despairing in atheistic politics and individual spiritualities.

These and other forms of despair are well known to both men. Joseph Ratzinger witnessed it in the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and the brutality of Communist and other explicitly secular regimes. Jorge Bergoglio witnessed it in the poverty and politics of Argentina. He has also echoed Benedict XVI's concern over a "dictatorship of relativism."

Providentially, both men share particular theological remedies for all this. In his autobiography Milestones, Ratzinger calls attention to the writings of theologians like Henri de Lubac—the twentieth century Jesuit that is also appreciated by Pope Francis. Ratzinger recalls his delight in de Lubac's expression of Catholicism as a "social faith, conceived and lived as a we—a faith that, precisely as such and according to its nature, was also hope, affecting history as a whole, and not only the promise of a private blissfulness to individuals."

Today, Pope Francis is demonstrating the power of these words. He has offered stunning visuals that have captivated international audiences. And he exhorts the faithful to love likewise. In his March 27th General Audience, he said that "[f]ollowing and accompanying Christ, staying with him, demands ‘coming out of ourselves', requires us to be outgoing; to come out of ourselves, out of a dreary way of living faith that has become a habit, out of the temptation to withdraw into our own plans which end by shutting out God's creative action." Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Catholic News Agency