Pope Francis, Saint Francis, and the Dodos - A Painting's Journey to the Vatican.

A friendly dodo

I have always been fascinated by religions and beliefs, yet I have never been entirely able to define what my own beliefs truly are. Even when I search deep within myself, the answer remains elusive, slipping away just as I think I've grasped it. I am not a religious person in the conventional sense, yet I speak to God every single day in my mind and through my art. The God I address belongs to no specific religion but exists simultaneously in all of them and in none. He is a presence that transcends doctrine, ritual, and institution.

I am deeply moved whenever I enter a place of worship, regardless of what faith it serves. Whether it is a Hindu temple, a mosque, a Christian church, or even the ruins of a sanctuary belonging to a long-vanished civilisation, I feel something stir inside me. I have come to believe wholeheartedly that what gives a place of worship its extraordinary vibration is the accumulated love poured into it by the faithful over years, decades, and centuries. That quiet, persistent, and sincere devotion eventually saturates the walls, the stone, the air itself, leaving behind a kind of benevolent aura that one can almost physically feel upon entering.

You may well be wondering what any of this has to do with my painting. I am getting there.

At the end of 2024, my dear friend Jean-Luc Mootoosamy, an exceptionally sensitive journalist, came to visit me at my studio in Curepipe. We spent the morning talking, and the conversation turned to the journeys he had made with Pope Francis over the preceding years. Jean-Luc had been regularly invited to cover the Holy Father's travels across the world, accompanying him on apostolic trips to countries on every continent. It was clearly a chapter of his life he held with great tenderness.

At some point during our exchange, he asked me a question I had not seen coming: "Would you be willing to create a painting that I could offer to the Pope during one of his upcoming trips?"

I was, for a moment, completely speechless. The request itself caught me off guard, but what truly intimidated me was the recipient. The Pope. It is not every day or any day, for that matter, that one is asked to paint something for the Holy Father. I did not hide the fact that the idea both touched and overwhelmed me.

In general, I rarely accept commissioned work. It is always extraordinarily difficult to create a painting that will satisfy another person's vision, particularly when my painting style (what I call the Zafer style) is so deeply rooted in spontaneous inspiration. With the Zafer style, I can never truly predict in advance what a painting will look like when it is finished. The process is entirely driven by intuition and the energy of the moment, so I cannot offer a sketch or draft for a client to approve before I begin. The painting reveals itself as it unfolds.

Over the years, I have come to understand just how challenging commissioned work is for me. There have been times when a client has not liked the final result: the sky was too pink, the trees too blue, the grass too orange, or they simply did not like triangles or circles. I fully understand these reactions, but I also cannot anticipate them. Inspiration is my only guide, and it does not take orders.

But here was Jean-Luc Mootoosamy, sitting in front of me, waiting for an answer. My first instinct was to say what I almost always say: I do not do commissions. But then a second thought followed almost immediately, and it said something rather different: "Come on now, it's the Pope. Are you really going to say no to the Pope?"

Light from above

I asked Jean-Luc whether I would be completely free to imagine and create whatever felt right, without constraint. He replied without hesitation that he was giving me full creative freedom, carte blanche. He did offer a gentle suggestion or two: perhaps a portrait of Pope Francis in the Zafer style, or perhaps the Holy Father walking along a beach in Mauritius. Both were charming ideas, and I thanked him for them. But my mind had already begun to move in a different direction.

After Jean-Luc left, I went to find my wife, Carol, and told her about the conversation. I told her that Jean-Luc had asked me to create a painting for Pope Francis. Carol, who is not easily impressed by anything or anyone, looked at me with her characteristic calm and said simply: "The pope? You don't like commissioned work. So what are you going to do?" That question "what are you going to do?" turned over and over in my mind for the rest of the evening, and then through most of the night.

What do you paint for a Pope?

I obviously had no personal precedents to draw from... A portrait of the Pope felt immediately wrong since everything I had read and heard about Pope Francis pointed to a man profoundly uncomfortable with self-promotion and ego. He would not, I felt certain, find any particular joy in contemplating his own likeness. And my purpose, as with everything I paint, is to bring joy. So the portrait idea was set aside.

I eventually decided to leave the decision in better hands than my own. I asked God with some impatience, "I don't want to rush You, but I would very much appreciate some inspiration tomorrow morning when I wake up. Around seven o'clock would be perfect."

A few days later (God, it turned out, was not particularly responsive to my scheduling requests), the idea came to me. I would paint the patron saint of Pope Francis: Saint Francis of Assisi. And I knew immediately that the saint would not be alone. He would be accompanied by dodos.

The dodo, of course, is one of the most famous symbols of extinction in the world, and it existed peacefully on the island of Mauritius for thousands of years before human arrival brought about its complete disappearance within a matter of decades. To me, the dodo represents all that we have lost through carelessness, greed, and indifference to the natural world. Saint Francis of Assisi, one of history's most passionate advocates for the care of animals and the environment, felt like the perfect companion for these vanished birds. The pairing felt true and meaningful; a gentle, timeless saint walking among creatures that no longer exist because of us.

And so the painting Saint Francis and the Dodos was born

Saint Francis and the dodos

I painted it with my whole heart. I put into it every ounce of warmth, sincerity, and love that I could find within me, hoping that something of that feeling would travel through the canvas and somehow reach the man for whom it was intended. When the painting was finished, I felt at peace with it. Jean-Luc came by the house before his departure for Switzerland, where he lives, and I handed him the painting.

Even today, something in my chest aches at the thought that Pope Francis never saw his painting.

In the months that followed, the Holy Father's health began to decline. His travels became increasingly rare, then rarer still, and eventually stopped almost entirely. Jean-Luc, who had accompanied him on so many of those journeys, never traveled with the Pope again. The painting stayed with Jean-Luc, waiting for an occasion that never came.

I immediately made my peace with this, though it was not easy, but one of the principles by which I try to live my life is this: if something is meant to happen, it will happen; and if it does not happen, there is a reason I cannot understand, and which I must accept. God, I am quite sure, had His own reasons, even if He chose not to share them with me.

On the day of Pope Francis's funeral, Jean-Luc traveled to Rome. He brought the painting with him, and he handed it over to the papal press office.

Saint Francis and the Dodos is now somewhere in the Vatican. I do not know where it rests, or whether anyone has truly looked at it. But it is there, carrying within its colors and its brushstrokes all the love I poured into it on those beautiful, hopeful mornings in my studio in Curepipe.

I can say without hesitation that the making of this small painting is to this day the most profound creative moment I have lived as a painter. I know that is enough, and in my heart, I do hope that Pope Francis sees his painting from wherever he is.