Fray Luis Pascual Dri, a 96-year-old priest who works as a confessor in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina), will be created Cardinal in the consistory on 30 September.
The Franciscan friar was born in 1927 in Federación, in the Province of Entre Ríos, but for many years he has worked as a confessor in the parish and Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Nueva Pompeya, in the southern part of the capital, almost in the border with the province of Buenos Aires.
It was around 6 in the morning on 9 July, Saturday, 2023 and Fray Luis was preparing to be picked up and taken to the temple to begin his confessions, when he found out, through a brother of the Order, that he was going to be Cardinal. “I laughed. I thought it was a joke. We friars sometimes, among ourselves, make those jokes, ”he admitted.
However, it did not take long to corroborate the information on the Vatican channel. “I started to look and I saw that the Pope was naming the Cardinals, and when he comes to the end and says ‘Luis Pascual Dri’, oh!, I disarmed! I started crying, crying, crying,” she recalled.
Once in the temple, confessing, “the news began to arrive from one side and another, and people greeted, congratulated the confessional, and I did not know what to say, what to do, because I never, never, never It would have happened that the Pope would come up with such a thing,” he admitted.
The Franciscan recalled that his beginnings as a confessor were in 1952, as soon as he was ordained a priest, in a school where children received the sacrament of Reconciliation. From then on, “I always kept going and I was more and more excited, especially when I heard the pain of the people.”
“One is growing in that desire to alleviate because there is a lot of pain, there is a lot of suffering, there is a lot of hopelessness, even, I would say, there is a lack of confidence that God will forgive,” he warned.
“After I finish confessing, I go before the Tabernacle to put all our pain there, before Jesus, because what can I do, other than forgive?”
“Then Jesus will work, Jesus will pacify, he will give peace, tranquility. I reach the ear, Jesus reaches the person’s heart, ”he reflected. “If they take my confession, it seems to me that they take my life,” he said.
His relationship with Pope Francis: “Someone who understood me”
Asked about his relationship with Pope Francis, the priest recalled that when Jorge Bergoglio was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Cardinal Primate of Argentina, he used to request audiences with some frequency to speak with him and “at any time he would attend me,” he stressed.
“Then I would tell him my problems, my difficulties, my doubts, especially in the Confession, and he in two words, smiling, would immediately solve the problem, and that’s how I began relating to him. He went quite often, we had a certain friendship, a certain trust with him ”.
“I really spoke to him like a brother, a father, someone who understood me, and we continued there until in 2013 they took him from here,” he recalled.
“I told him that he had scruples because sometimes they told me that he was very ‘big sleeve’, that he forgave everything, and I said: I can’t do anything else, if Jesus did not deny forgiveness to anyone,” he compared.
When someone who comes to confession “is repentant, it hurts what they have done and wants to be free, then there is my tranquility and my peace, I give them absolution with complete tranquility and without any fear,” he said. “I forgive because Jesus forgave,” she maintained.
The priest also recounted a meeting he had in San Giovanni Rotondo (Italy) with Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, on the occasion of a trip he made during the novitiate, sent to continue his formation in different cities.
During that visit, which lasted several days, Fray Dri was able to confess: “He attended me very briefly, very kindly, I was with him for a little while,” he recalled.
“I always saw a man in pain,” he admitted. “He had a moan of pain, but an anguished moan,” he said. However, “I always observed him as a man of God, a man full of God’s love, but that he was suffering the same sufferings as Jesus, that was palpable,” he assured.
He also highlighted that at the Mass that he celebrated at 5:00 in the morning, people “went crazy to be around.”
Although he does not remember having experienced anything extraordinary, Padre Pio was seen as “deeply devoted to what he was doing, what he was doing, what he was celebrating he lived deeply,” he said.
“I learned mercy, forgiveness, from Padre Pio, I learned that,” he acknowledged. “Only forgiveness can save the world, never violence, never fight, never revenge,” he said.
“We don’t listen to each other, we confront each other, we argue.” In contrast, he called for dialogue, to be able to remain silent “to see what the other really tells me and to be able to join.”
“Let’s learn to listen to each other with affection, with love, hope, and security that things will improve because God is in all this and He has the last word,” he concluded.