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MUMBAI – Francis has a well-earned reputation as the “Cold Call Pope,” often phoning people out of the blue who’ve written him or whom he wants to contact for some other reason. He recently burnished that reputation with a video call to the 95-year-old grandmother of a member of his travel team.
On Sept. 2, Pope Francis made a video call to the home of the Kallukalam family in the southern Indian state of Kerala, which was answered by Father Thomas Kallukalam, who belongs to India’s Syro-Malabar church, one of the 23 eastern churches in communion with Rome.
The pope promptly asked for Kallukalam’s mother, 95-year-old Sosamma Antony, who is also the grandmother of Monsignor George Koovakad, an official of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who serves as a member of the pontiff’s advance team for his foreign trips and travels with the pontiff.
During Francis’s July 2022 trip to Canada, Koovakad has mentioned that his grandmother was ill with Covid-19. Since that time, the pope periodically would ask Koovakad for updates on his grandmother’s health, and during his recent Aug. 31-Sept. 4 trip to Mongolia, he expressed a desire to speak with her.
Continued below.
cruxnow.com
On Sept. 2, Pope Francis made a video call to the home of the Kallukalam family in the southern Indian state of Kerala, which was answered by Father Thomas Kallukalam, who belongs to India’s Syro-Malabar church, one of the 23 eastern churches in communion with Rome.
The pope promptly asked for Kallukalam’s mother, 95-year-old Sosamma Antony, who is also the grandmother of Monsignor George Koovakad, an official of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who serves as a member of the pontiff’s advance team for his foreign trips and travels with the pontiff.
During Francis’s July 2022 trip to Canada, Koovakad has mentioned that his grandmother was ill with Covid-19. Since that time, the pope periodically would ask Koovakad for updates on his grandmother’s health, and during his recent Aug. 31-Sept. 4 trip to Mongolia, he expressed a desire to speak with her.
Continued below.
Pope surprises 95-year-old Indian grandmother of a priest with video call
At one point in the video, Francis, speaking in English, responded to Sosama saying she would pray for him, “I need, I need … this job is crazy!”
