Between the presents, the third gift was, without a doubt, the most imaginative in the repertoire: a poem by the bertsolari Jon Sarasua written in Basque and, in case the Pontiff did not fully grasp the message, opportunely translated into Quechua. The Basque Government has explained the gesture as a recognition of «the involvement and commitment» of the then Father Prevost «with indigenous languages» during his missionary stage in the Peruvian Andes, where he first served in Chulucanas and later as bishop of Chiclayo.

The choice of the Quechua language as a bridge between Rome and Vitoria—bypassing, in the process, the uncomfortable formality of Spanish, the native language of hundreds of millions of Catholics and, coincidentally, also the Pope’s language—allows the autonomous Executive to frame Basque within the category of «minoritized languages of the world,» on equal footing with those spoken by the Andean peoples evangelized by Spanish missionaries five centuries ago.