ARGENTINA
Reuters
By Paulo Prada and Helen Popper
BUENOS AIRES | Wed Mar 27, 2013
(Reuters) – When Jorge Bergoglio finished studying chemistry at high school his mother asked him what he would study next.
“Medicine,” replied the skinny 19-year-old, according to his younger sister, Maria Elena.
Bergoglio’s mother cleared a storage room in the family’s working-class Buenos Aires home for him to use as a study. Every day, after his morning job in a lab, he would arrive home and disappear into the room.
One morning, though, his mother got a surprise. In the room, she found not anatomy or medicine texts but books on theology and Catholicism. Perturbed at his change of course, she confronted her eldest son.
“What is this?” she asked.
Bergoglio responded calmly: “It’s medicine for the soul.”
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