Future Pope Wanted to Be a Priest If He Didn't Marry Fiancee

Gazzetta del Sud
March 14, 2013

http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/38559/Future-pope-wanted-to-be-a-priest-if-he-didn-t-marry-fiancee.html

Pontiff's ex-girlfriend hopes he doesn't abandon path


(By Martino Rigacci) Buenos Aires, March 14 - They were little more than children when he, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, delivered a love letter with a drawing of a little white house in which he would have liked to live with her. He wrote, "If I don't marry you, I will make myself a priest". How things actually went is now known to the world, but his girlfriend at the time, Amalia - today white-haired - recalled the episode in interviews with Argentine journalists. "I hope he always remains what he is, never abandons that path, and that he always remembers Argentina," she told journalists, amused by so much interest. "In reality, you call me 'fiancee' but that is not the right word. I was a fiancee afterward, with those (men) who became my two husbands. With (Bergoglio) it was different. He never suggested 'bad' things," Amalia continued. The love letter was confiscated by Amalia's father, however, and was ripped apart by her mother. "When yesterday I found out from the TV that he had become pope, I stood up, I hugged my son and I cried from the emotion," said the woman, who lives in Flores, Bergoglio's neighborhood in Buenos Aires. "Then everyone called me, the other children, friends…". "I remember so many things, his mother for me was the 'Virgin Mary', she was a woman who was truly very good," she added. Asked whether she would want to meet Pope Francis now, Amalia responded without hesitation, "No. He is in a very high office. I am very humble".