Some remember Valentine's Day for a bouquet of roses, others for a romantic dinner. Don Enrico Murgia, on February 14, 2021, remembers it for the unmistakable voice of Pope Francis speaking to him from the speakerphone , while he is stopped at a traffic light on state road 554.
"Hello, Don Enrico? This is Pope Francis." A phone call that lasted just five minutes, but was capable of leaving an eternal mark on the heart of a young priest from the suburbs.
Don Enrico Murgia, then parish priest of the church of San Pietro Pascasio in Quartucciu, was returning to the parish . It was Valentine's Day and a boy had just offered him roses at the window. His cell phone rings: an anonymous number. "I usually don't answer," Don Enrico specifies, "but that day I made an exception, a bit for company." He would never have imagined that the Pope himself was on the other end.
"I immediately recognized the voice, that Argentine accent that touches your heart," he says, still emotional. The call, which arrived at 5:00 p.m. sharp, was linked to the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the parish. A few days earlier, in fact, an official telegram from the Secretariat of State had announced Pope Francis's greetings. But hearing him actually speak, on the phone, with affection and attention, was something else.
The Pontiff, with his unmistakable style of simple words and gestures, did not limit himself to a formal greeting. "He told me he was not a cleric of the State, but a priest among the people," Don Enrico recalls, "he spoke to me as if he had always known me, as if he knew exactly what my path was, my efforts and my dreams."
Today, transferred to the parish of Siliqua, Don Enrico thinks back to that moment as a turning point . “Why me?” he still asks himself. Perhaps to remind him that even the “peripheral” priests are in the heart of the Pope, and that the Gospel is lived in the living flesh of communities, in difficult neighborhoods, among those who need to be listened to, close, and have faith.
"That phone call," he says, "was for me the Resurrection in a moment of tiredness. The Pope of my education, of my studies, of my priesthood, suddenly entered my car and my life. A very strong sign that made me feel part of the true Church, the one that walks, that loves, that surprises."
And while he also remembers the meeting with Francis in Rome, during the Jubilee of Mercy or the Pope's visit to the difficult Tor Bella Monaca, Don Enrico smiles . "I take everything as a sign to be, despite the hardships, joyfully "a shepherd with the smell of the sheep" just as he told his priests on his first Holy Thursday. He called me on Valentine's Day and while outside they offered me roses, inside the car I received a much greater gift: a call of love, for my parish and for my mission."