By Lisa Monteiro
Inside the archives section of the Vatican Secretariat in Rome sits Sister Lucy Britto. For seven hours every day, she sifts through the sea of mail that the charismatic Pope Francis gets. These include greetings, letters of appreciation, requests for prayers and even help to sort out family disputes.
It is a job Sister Lucy, born and brought up in South Goa’s Cuncolim, has been doing for 13 years, and for three pontiffs. She is the only Indian among the 300-odd staff rendering this service at the Secretariat — the oldest dicastery in the Roman Curia, the central papal governing bureaucracy of the Catholic Church.
Sister Lucy, 69, has also had Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II as her bosses. It’s a privileged position but also a lot of work. “There is no time to interact with others as work is pouring in,” she tells TOI from Vatican City . Vatican Radio had earlier reported that Pope Francis gets a few thousand letters a week from across the world.
Her job is to make sure that details of all letters are fed into the system. “Nothing is thrown out. Every letter received is treated with secrecy and respect for the sender. Even little children write in and send drawings of the Pope with his skullcap,” she says.
Not too long ago, she was pleasantly surprised to see a letter in Konkani that came in from Mapusa. A majority of the letters come from Italy, Portugal, France and Spain, she says, adding that most Indian mail is sent from Kerala.
Besides being proficient in French (she worked as a lecturer in French at St Francis College for Women in Hyderabad), Sr Lucy is also able to decipher text in Polish and German, which she picked up on the job. While Hindi and Marathi come naturally to her, she also has a good command over Portuguese and Spanish.
Source: The Times of India