by Agence France Presse
The courtship was over even before it began.
“If I don’t marry you, I’ll become a priest,†Pope Francis reportedly wrote a bespectacled, white-haired woman identified only as Amalia in a letter more than 60 years ago, when they were just 10 or 12 years old.
They didn’t get married. He became a priest. And on Wednesday, he became the Pope.
“In the little letter, he had drawn a little house with a red roof and white walls and he wrote, ‘this house is what I’ll buy when we get married,’†the woman remembered, standing on the sidewalk in the Flores neighborhood where they were both born.
But the seemingly innocent promise was taken very differently by Amalia’s conservative parents, who were scandalized that their little girl was receiving notes from a boy.
“I have nothing to hide, it was a thing of children,†Amalia said decades later as reporters and television cameras swarmed.
Nevertheless, her parents tore the letter up and did whatever was necessary to keep their daughter away from the young Jorge Bergoglio.
Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina, was elected Pope on Wednesday. He is the first man from the Americas to hold the post.
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