SAUCIER — Taking it all in

Like so many, my eyes were fixed on the curtained doorway behind the empty balcony. I, too, was curious, excited, hopeful.
Finally, the door opened, a cardinal stepped out and proclaimed, “Habemus papam.”
A roaring applause greeted Leo XIV. After a humble silence, he finally spoke. He talked of unity, dialogue, bridges and reconciliation.
Then he invited the world to pray the “Hail Mary.”
No one should have been surprised. His Augustinian community has long had a special devotion to Mary under desirous titles of Consolation, Good Counsel, and Perpetual Help.
He spent decades in Peru and participated in the prayers and rituals surrounding the Virgen de la Puerta.
Trujillo, where the Augustinians have ministered for almost 500 years, was threatened with a pirate raid in the 17th century. In nearby Otuzco, residents put up an image of Mary and prayed for her intercession.
The area was saved, and no one has forgotten. Each year, prayers and processions honor Our Lady of the Gate, as Peruvians beg to be spared from modern perils threatening their lives.
No doubt, this scholarly priest, a long-time resident of Italy, was reminded of another Mary at the Gate.
In his “Divine Comedy,” Dante is guided through hell and purgatory, first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, his lost love. But as he ascends the realms of heaven, Beatrice disappears and is replaced by the Virgin Mary.
Exiled from his homeland and bereft of the woman he idolized, Dante could empathize with the suffering of those he encountered. But this same pain would not allow him to enter the fullness of joy found in the upper reaches of heaven.
It is as if Mary meets him at heaven’s gate, not to protect him from some external foe, but to absorb the pain within. Only Mary, who had freely chosen a life filled with heartache, could relieve him of his own.
Just days before Mother’s Day, the smiling, red-robed man may have been remembering his own mother, and her devotion to Mary that she shared with so many women.
It is Mary, a feminine beacon in a sometimes-dark forest of masculinity, who guides women and the willing to the Source of strength, patience, wisdom, and yes, the absorption of another’s pain, that motherhood demands and our world desperately needs.
Of course, given the present state of this world, this American sports-fan-turned-pope could have just been throwing up a “Hail Mary.”