Automobili Lamborghini made the headlines when a delegation from the Italian luxury car giants visited the Vatican. The team led by Stefano Domenicani, Chairman and Chief Executive of Automobili Lamborghini, was at the Vatican to deliver a special car its customisation department, known as Lamborghini Ad Personam, had made for Pope Francis to him. The Catholic Pontiff had gladly approved and collected the gift. He also took photos with the Lamborghini delegation and the car they brought. It was one car for which a few eyebrows were raised for some reasons. Others gave express approval of the gift also for some reasons. For the latter, the gift is one of its kind; it was designed especially for the Pope. It was painted in the colours of the Vatican and the signature of Pope Francis also adorns the vehicle. Then, it is a Lamborghini! You may also add that it is a Lamborghini Huracan RWD.
The very act of donating a bespoke Lamborghini Huracan RWD to the Pope was newsworthy, but of course the luxury car brand has not at any time been removed from regular media blitz. The donation to the Pope was different and drew a special kind of attention because many were eager to see the Pope drive a Lambo. Also, through that move, Automobili Lamborghini hit the news on another level. It was way different from the Lamborghini news that we witnessed in Nigeria.
I’m sure many of us remember the social media buzz created by the botched event of a planned purchase of a Lamborghini car, by a randy music artiste, among a section of the Nigerian youth recently. I do not wish to contaminate this writing with the intentions of that Lamborghini debate I am referring to. But you may ask what might have led to the Nigerian Lamborghini buzz of a few weeks ago? Please excuse me from the explanation because I don’t want to mention the names of those involved. But I’m of the belief that indeed many Nigerians – young and old – would remember that it was a hot social media gist. It was a kind of argument over Lamborghini between one of our very big and thriving Afrobeat musicians on the one hand, and one (allegedly) opportunistic lady on the other.
Pope Francis did not drive his super luxury car. He did not keep the Lamborghini Huracan donated to him for his use. In fact, by February which was a couple of months after the delivery of the car, it was back at the Lamborghini Museum, waiting for the next determined action. It was obvious that Pope Francis only wanted to keep his Focus. Yes and, literally speaking, that was the case because he was satisfied with his beloved Ford Focus, one of the modest cars he was known with around the Vatican. I think he would never have really wished that any such luxury car of the class and magnitude of Lamborghini should take away his focus.
So, what did he do with his special Lambo? He offered it up for auction. By this time, RM Sotheby’s had stepped in and they conducted the auction on May 12, 2018. The auction at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco also coincided with that imperial city’s bubbly Monaco Grand Prix. The car is a hot cake and buyers bided expectedly in their numbers. Eventually, a firm in Spain won the bid. The car was sold for $960,797. The winner of the auction was a car rental service based in Spain, known as Rent Car Deluxe. The Spanish car rental outfit was said to have planned to donate the proceeds from the rental of the Pope’s Lamborghini Huracan to charity.
It was thus a case of a good deed triggering further good deeds. Rent Car Deluxe had keyed into the initial intentions of Papa Francesco (Pope Francis), whose original idea was charity. That was all he had in mind when he put the car up for sale. The proceeds from the auction were distributed to four charity bodies. The Pontifical Foundation Aiuto alla Chiesa che Soffre (Aid to the Church in Need), which is working to rebuild the Nineveh Plain in Iraq for Christians to return to their ancestral land, got a chunk of the money. The foundation is rebuilding housing, public structures and places of worship in the plains. The Pope John XXIII Community, a charity organisation which devotes itself to women victims of trade and prostitution is also a beneficiary, and Progetto Casa Papa Francesco (Pope Francis House Project) is a part of this community. Then, two Italian groups that carry out activities in Africa namely: GICAM – headed by a hand surgeon, Dr. Marco Lanzetta; and Amici per il Centrafrica (Friends of Central Africa), which has been working with projects primarily dedicated to women and children for many years, is the fourth beneficiary.
We also remember that Pope Francis once got a Harley Davidson motorcycle which some naughty people rechristened “Holy Davidson”. These luxury items fetched money for the restoration and healing of thousands of others whom Papa Francesco did not know. That is the life Pope Francis lived; a true Franciscan who began his Papacy by highlighting the name of Francis – a Saint and Confessor who left it all and fully embraced a life in Christ characterised by material frugality.
Pope Francis left no material acquisitions. His Lamborghini and his power bikes were no better attraction than the reward of eternal life with Christ. Thus, there would be no expectations of people dragging themselves around for the estate of the man who had the ears and love of more than 1.4 billion of his people. His will was the desire to be buried as simply as possible and the doctors had said that he didn’t want to be intubated. When Dr. Sergio Alfieri was summoned via a telephone call in the morning of Monday, 21 April by Massimiliano Strapetti, the Pontiff’s personal nurse, there was that tone of submission and belief that the there was nothing more they could do as humans. The simplicity everyone saw also shone through even in his will and testament – a 275-word instruction he wrote in just 275 words.
There is virtually nothing hidden about the life and even the death of Francis. His worth as a Pope is known through the allowances he was entitled to, but which he did not claim. Reporters asked him what was in the bag he was always clutching, which he had insisted on carrying by himself when travelling. Pope Francis joked that its contents were not the nuclear codes and that it was only normal for someone travelling to have at least a briefcase. He showed the content of the bag to be his breviary, a razor, a diary and a book to read. On that trip, he had a book on St. Therese of Lisieux. It was his first foreign trip and the encounter was on their way from that visit to Brazil in 2013. “I have always taken a bag with me when travelling,” he told the inquisitive journalists. Then he capped the encounter with a profound advice: “We must get used to being normal. The normality of life.”
By his death, the normality of life has set in for Pope Francis. there is no one living on earth that will not die. As a senior friend puts it: “We don come, na to go remain.” Pope Francis has come and gone and the testimonies following his departure are such that gadden the heart. How often do we remain normal and for how long? How does our daily duties show that we are normal? By our routine interactions do we show the normality of life? Or are you the type that makes “do you know who I am?” vivid?
Pick your lesson in the life lived by Francis. Just do well your daily duties.
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