The handwriting is neat, steady and very, very small. In the top corner of the postcard, embossed in blue, is the Vatican’s official crest, the two crossed keys given by Jesus, according to the gospels, to Saint Peter to open the gates of the heaven. “Thank God I am okay,” the card reads, “and with a lot of work. Please, I ask you to pray for me.”
The signature below is “Papa Francesco”, the name by which most Argentines refer to their countryman, Pope Francis, 265th and current successor to Peter. It tells you something about him that, with a troubled global church of 1.2 billion souls to shepherd, he makes time to hand-write regular notes to old friends such as Enrique Gallini, still working in his late 70s as a lowly clerk in a shabby Ministry of the Interior building in central Buenos Aires.
