Cardinals and popes have mothers, too!

“Thank you, Mom. On your knees, we learned the Gospel.” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See's discreet and reserved Secretary of State, said farewell to his mother with an emotional voice and tear-filled eyes at her funeral in Schiavon, northeast Italy, on Tuesday. She had died at the age of 96 on Saturday at her home in Bassano del Grappa.

Indeed, the death of Ada Miotti Parolin, the mother of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has been a source of great emotion in the Vatican since last weekend. The Pope's Secretary of State was very close to his mother, who had become a widow 59 years ago when her husband died in a car accident in 1965. 

Between diplomatic trips to the other side of the world, Cardinal Parolin, who turns 70 in January, regularly visited the Veneto region to spend time with his mother. The Pope excused him from accompanying him on his tour of Asia and Oceania so that he could stay with his family.

It’s a sign that the Church's highest officials are first and foremost human beings, that they have their human affections.

In fact, it was under his simple priestly title, “Don Pietro,” that the number two of the Catholic Church appeared on the obituary notice, along with his sister, Maria Rosa, and his brother Giovanni. The siblings had suffered a tragedy in 1965: the sudden death of their father, aged just 44, in a car accident.

Ada Miotti, a widow for almost 60 years, was a schoolteacher. She had appeared with her son during a pastoral visit to the village of Salcedo, where she had returned to the school where she had taught in the 1950s.

In his homily, Cardinal Parolin delivered a moving narrative of his mother's “ascent to heaven.”

"Today, they meet again 59 years later, in an embrace that no one will ever be able to dissolve, and which will last for eternity,” he recounted before a very emotional audience of friends of the family, officials, and functionaries of the Secretary of State. 

In recent history, several cardinals have been lucky enough to invite their mothers to the consistory marking their entry into the College of Cardinals. Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, who hails from complex and tense Nicaragua, was accompanied by his mother to Rome for the 2014 consistory.

The archbishop of Managua was able to benefit from the talents of this professional seamstress, and thus avoided the need to make costly purchases in a Roman store. Indeed, she had been absolutely certain of his entry into the Sacred College, and had sewn his cardinal's cassock for him several years in advance!

In 2022, some eight years later, little “Leopoldito” was already 73 years old when he lost his mom, but his emotion generated a great deal of media coverage.

American Cardinal Joseph Tobin was also very close to his mother, who died in 2021. At 93, she had made the trip to Rome to honor her son with her presence at the 2016 consistory. Then a widow for almost 40 years, Marie Terese Tobin had impressed her companions with her cheerfulness. “I would go anywhere in the world to be where my children are. And if they think it's going to be fun, we're all there,” she said with aplomb.

French Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, was able to benefit from the presence of both parents at the consistory that admitted him to the Sacred College in August 2022. “It's a great source of pride for us,” they told us at the time, beaming from their wheelchairs, and very moved to see the other cardinals come to greet them with great respect. 

These former pieds-noirs, who had to leave Algeria when it became independent in 1962, then moved to Paris before settling in Marseille's Quartiers Nords, also attended the mass concelebrated by their son with Pope Francis at the Stade Vélodrome in the city of Marseille on September 23, 2023. 

And where do the popes fit into all this? Pope Francis sometimes mentions his mother, who died in 1981. But, he even more often evokes his closeness to his now-famous grandmother Rosa, who was a pillar of his vocation.

We know that John Paul II had a strong devotion to his mother, Emilia Kaczorowska, who died in 1929 just as the future pope was about to celebrate his ninth birthday. Some believe that the Polish pontiff's great sensitivity to questions of femininity and motherhood was due to this intimate tragedy. She died of myocarditis and kidney failure at the age of 43, and is currently the subject of a beatification process, together with her husband, Karol Wojtyla, who died in 1941.

As for Benedict XVI, he was the fruit of the late union between Maria Peintner and Josef Ratzinger, after the two 40-somethings met through a classified ad! The daughter of a craftsman and cook in several hotels, Maria passed away in December of 1963, just as her son had begun to make a name for himself as a leading theologian during the Second Vatican Council.