Meet seven curiosities about Pope Francis

A maneuver to get him out of the papacy dispute, a phrase from a Brazilian cardinal who inspired his name of Pontiff, a girlfriend before religious life and a passion after the seminar begins.

These are just some of the revelations made over the last few years by Pope Francis, who was once Jorge Mario Bergoglio and over 88 years marked the history of Argentina and the world. Check out some curiosities of the life of the South American Pontiff:

Already had girlfriend and passion put it to the test

In the autobiography “Life: My History Through History”, written with Italian Vaticanist Fabio Marchese Ragona, the Pope says he has dated and that after that, another passion put him to the test when he was already in the seminary.

“I had had a girlfriend before, a very sweet girl who worked in the world of cinema and then married and had children,” Francisco described about the relationship, without revealing the name of the girl or the age he had at the time.

About the posterior “little passion”, the pontiff said it was “normal, or we would not be human beings.”

“I was in the wedding of one of my uncles and was delighted by a girl. She turned my head with her beauty and intelligence. For a week, I got her image in mind and it was hard to pray! Then, fortunately, passed, and dedicated myself body and soul to my vocation,” he reported.

Was on the brink of death at the age of 21

After the challenge that, for Bergoglio meant falling in love in his youth, he says that his next “trial” was in 1957, when everyone in the seminar took a flu. He was also sick but, as a difference from colleagues, he was never healing.

“I was still stuck in the room, because the fever did not give in. So one day I worsened: my body temperature was very high, and the rector, scared, took me to the Syrian Lebanese hospital.
I was diagnosed with a serious infection, and that day they took a liter of liquid from my lungs, ”he said.

The pontiff said owed his life to the Italian nun Cornelia Caraglio who accompanied him at the hospital. “She realized that the doses of penicillin that the doctors prescribed were too low and managed the correct dose to my problem, which saved me,” he said.

Seminar colleagues also went to the hospital every day to donate blood. “I had many guardian angels nearby,” the Pope expressed on the occasion. But the recovery was long, and he reveals that he even prepared to die.

“I spent a long time in silence. I thought about what could happen to me, prayed Our Lady and, in a way, also prepared me for death. I could not rule out that risk. My mother, whenever I was going to visit me, fell in tears, others tried to comfort me,” he reported in the book.

There was part of the lung removed

In November 1957, the year he had the infection, Bergoglio had the upper lobe of the right lung removed, due to the formation of three cysts. Surgical intervention was with the best techniques of the time.

“You can imagine the size of the cuts and how much I suffered,” Francisco described about the procedure.

Maneuver to get him out of the dispute over the papacy

Another revelation of the Pope in his book published in 2024 was that he learned that he was being considered to assume the pontificate when he began to be interrogated by the other cardinals.

He describes that he was approached by Spanish Cardinal Santos April y Castelló who asked, “Eminence, sorry to ask, but is it true that it lacks a lung?”

Bergoglio replied that no, that he had not only the upper wolf of the right agency, taken when he was 21 years old.

The Pope described that the cardinal was serious and complained “quite angry” from “last -minute maneuvers.” “This was the precise moment when I realized that the cardinals were thinking of myself as successor to Benedict XVI,” he said.

Brazilian Cardinal influenced choice of his name

Still in the work “Life: My History Through History”, the Pope said that in the first vote of the Conclave, in which he was almost elected for the leadership of the Catholic Church, Brazilian Cardinal Dom Cláudio Hummes, Emeritus Archbishop of São Paulo, approached him with words of encouragement: “Don’t be afraid! It is the work of the Holy Spirit!”.

And that was not the only occasion when the Brazilian expressed support for the Argentine colleague. The Pope said that in the third vote of that afternoon, in the 77th vote, when his name reached two thirds of the preferences and he was applauded, Hummes approached again, gave him a kiss and said, “Never forget the poor.”

“It was there that I chose the name I would have as Pope: Francis,” he said, explaining that the decision, made after the words of the Brazilian, was a tribute to St. Francis of Assisi, known for exercising his religious life in simplicity and dedicating himself to the poor.

Was expelled from the San Lorenzo locker room

In 1998, when he was still a priest, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was expelled from the San Lorenzo locker room, his heart team, before the start of a game against Clube Atlético Platense.

The story was told by the team coach himself, Alfio Basile, who at the time was just hired after a sequence of “Cuervo” defeats and expelled the priest.

“We were in the motivational words to go out to the stadium and suddenly the locker room door opens and a priest enters. I say: But no priest, no one can enter the locker room, especially before starting the match,” he said years later, on a television show.

The coach then asked the club president, Fernando Miele, who was the religious and heard that he was a San Lorenzo fan, who in all games was going to bless the players before the matches.

“But if you hired me because San Lorenzo doesn’t win anyone! You can send this unlucky. At that moment, I didn’t even know who this priest was,” he said, saying that Bergoglio left with the “very sad” face.

Basile’s strategy worked and, in that game, Almagro’s team won 4-1 from Vicente López’s team.

In 2013, the year the Pope was elected, meeting Miele, he heard, “Did you see who the Pope is?” He said, “How I won’t know, everyone knows who Pope Francis is!”

And that’s when I finally knew, by the former club president: “You don’t know! It’s the one you kicked out of the locker room when he was Bergoglio!”

Tension with the Kirchner

As a cardinal from Buenos Aires, Bergoglio lived in constant tension with former presidents Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, in their respective governments. The main divergence was due to the support of Kirchnerism to the egalitarian marriage, which was approved by the Argentine Congress in 2010.

Principal opposing the bill, the country’s Catholic Church led by Bergoglio affirmed at the time that “the most serious” was the law to allow adoption by same -sex couples. The then cardinal even spoke in demonstrations against the approval of the law.

In a letter to the Carmelite sisters of Buenos Aires obtained throughout the Channel Todo Notícias, an affiliate of CNN in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio even said that the bill supported by Kirchnerism “is not a simple political struggle, is the intention of destroying God’s plan.”

In his memories book “Honestly”, Cristina Kirchner says she saw the announcement that Bergoglio would be the new Pope on TV and immediately called his secretary, asking him to go with his computer to the presidential residence: “We have to be the first to greet the new Pope,” he said, also saying that he would go to consecration in Rome.

“In those days, many inhabitants of the North and Recoleta neighborhood, the richest neighborhoods in the city of Buenos Aires, hung yellow Vatican flags on the balconies, to celebrate Bergoglio’s choice. I’m sure they believed they had found a new leader to fight ‘mare’,” Cristina Kirchner said about a curse used to insult her at the time.

The former president reports, however, that she was not concerned about past conflicts. During his presidency, there were seven meetings of the Argentine leader with the Pope. In one of them, he mentioned the pontiff’s relationship with the late husband: “Deep down, I think Argentina was a very small place for you two together,” he said.

In the book, she reveals the existence of a dispute between the two since the beginning of the Nostor government. Casa Rosada is only 350 meters from the Metropolitan Cathedral, also located in May Square.

“We all said to the fool: ‘You have to go see Bergoglio.’ He said, ‘No, he who comes to see me at the government’s headquarters.’ They definitely never found themselves because none wanted to cross the May Square, ”she says in the book.

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This content was originally published in Meet Seven Curiosities about Pope Francis on CNN Brazil.

Source: CNN Brasil