SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Pope Francis put human dignity at the center of his preaching. He was outspoken on the dangers of shutting out immigrants and the importance of 'welcoming the stranger'.
"He had the ability to bring everything down to a human level," said Father Bernardo Lara, a priest in the Diocese of San Diego. "It marked me."
Lara met Pope Francis on several occasions while studying moral theology in Rome.
"One time he was talking to me in Spanish, then he moved to an Italian person and then someone French. He spoke to us in our own particular language about things we could relate even though we were in different cultures."
"Would you say that knowledge and understanding of different cultures carried over into his teachings as well?"
"He could see people as what we are," Lara said. "People being made in the image of god."
Pope Francis' empathy shined through his actions: visiting asylum seekers in Greece and washing the feet of Muslim refugees on Holy Thursday.
Through his words, the Pope called upon Americans to reject hostility toward foreigners in the first-ever papal address to Congress.
"We must not be taken aback by the numbers, but rather view them as peasants," Pope Francis said in 2015. "Seeing their faces and listening to their stories."
Lara says Francis had an overall welcoming personality. The Pope's tongue-in-cheek sarcasm made him feel like an old friend in many first encounters.
"I had a prayer book and I was like 'Can you bless it?' he took it, he blessed it and then he said 'Do you want me to sign it?' I'm like 'I never had a Pope autograph it' and I didn't have a pen, I'm like 'You know what, I don't have a pen Holy Father I'm so sorry' and he goes 'Oh well, next time', 'Wait, is there going to be a next time?' and he's like 'Your loss'. And then we just laughed and he kept walking."
Lara believes this attitude of brotherhood toward strangers will be part of the Pope's legacy.
