With the Easter holidays they arrived in good weather, and this time of the year is when Umberto Tiberi, 87, can comfortably configure his plastic chair in front of his small coffee in the suburb of Tor Bella Monaca, at the distant edges of the Italian capital. The weather was pleasant, with spring settling, but for this former chemical industry worker who opened his Italian bar after many years in Germany, there was something sad in the air.
The day before, on Monday, April 21, Pope Francis died at the age of 88. “It was the Pope of the poor! Francis loved to be simply among us … a human pope. We will miss him a lot,” Tiberi lamented. As head of the Catholic Church, the Pontiff was also the bishop of Rome, and worldwide, as well as in his diocese, Francis said they tell priority to the peripheries and those who inhabit them.
In Italian, the term “periphery” literally refers to the suburbs of the main cities, such as Tor Bella Monaca, whose simplified public buildings with their worn facades are located 15 kilometers from the Plaza de San Pedro.
Like other residents of a neighboring bell that describes as he suffers from a “bad reputation,” Tiberi remembers with love on March 8, 2015, the day Pope Francis visited them at the beginning of their pontificate to define. Near, this imposing modern building with an appearance of Pagoda, built in the 1980s, stands out between a supermarket, apartments blocks and a public garden with undisclosed grass.
‘Suburban residents felt loved’
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