I Made the Pope a Christian

“I made the Pope a Christian”

Biography of Fr. Enrico Pozzoli, SDB

(ANS – Rome – November 8, 2021) – “He spent hours and hours in the confessional, and over the years he had become the point of reference for all the Salesians in Buenos Aires and the surrounding communities.... He was truly a great confessor.” These are the words of the Holy Father about Fr. Enrico Pozzoli, the Salesian missionary who baptized little Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires on Christmas day 1936. This and much more is contained in the book published by the Vatican Publishing House (LEV) Ho fatto cristiano il Papa by journalist Ferruccio Pallavera, which was presented across various locations including Rome, on Friday, November 12 at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in an event that will also see the Rector Major of the Salesians and other illustrious figures.

A “worker of the Kingdom of God,” a “saint,” as Pope Francis himself defined him, but at the same time a missionary like many others, Fr. Pozzoli left Lombardy for Argentina in the years of Italian emigration to Latin America at the beginning of the 20th century. Fr. Pozzoli’s story would perhaps have fallen into oblivion, like that of many such “saints next door,” if this Salesian priest, who was born in Senna Lodigiana in 1880 and died in Buenos Aires 81 years later, had not baptized the child who would later become the Supreme Pontiff.

In Pallavera’s book, which is also a historical cross-section of the life of the peasants of the Lodi area between the two centuries and of the Salesian missions in Patagonia in the same years, the relationship between the whole Bergoglio family and that Salesian with a passion for photography and the hobby of repairing watches is reconstructed in detail. Fr. Pozzoli was, indeed, at center stage at various times. He was the intermediary who introduced Mario Bergoglio and Regina Sivori, the future Pontiff’s parents to each other. It was he who presided at their wedding; and again it was he who helped the parents of the future Pope to accept the request of their eldest son to enter the seminary.

Many details of the life of the missionary Fr. Enrico Pozzoli that emerge from Pallavera’s book were told to the author by Pope Francis himself. “When in 2020, I finished the first draft of the book, I realized that I had some substantial gaps,” says the journalist. “The only person who could fill the gaps in my research was the Pope. So, I wrote to Pope Francis, to tell him that I was developing a biography of the priest who had baptized him, but I never imagined that he would call and invite me to Casa Santa Marta for a one-hour private interview. Thanks to that exclusive interview, I was not only able to fill in the holes in my story, but I had practically to rewrite the book.”

Fr. Pozzoli’s biography was presented:

- on Wednesday, November 10, in Asti, in the presence of the bishop of the city, Most Rev. Marco Prastaro;

It will be presented

- on Friday, November 12, at 6:30 p.m., at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Minister of Defense Lorenzo Guerini, and the Rector Major Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime will be present;

- on Sunday, November 14, at 3:00 p.m., in Senna Lodigiana, in the presence of Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches;

- on Wednesday, November 17, at 8:45 p.m., in Lodi, with felicitations by the bishop of the city, Most Rev. Maurizio Malvestiti, and the director of L’Osservatore Romano, Andrea Monda.

For more on the Salesian influence on the future Pope: From the Eastern Front: What Jorge Bergoglio Learned from the Salesians (sdbnews.blogspot.com)