Ever wonder at what point in the pope’s life he chose to literally take a leap of faith and become a priest?

When Pope Francis was just the wee age of 12, he had a relationship with a woman named Amalia Damonte. Now 76, Damonte has decided to tell the world about their “love-affair.”

When we were young, he wrote me a letter and I didn’t reply to him. What I wanted was for him to disappear from the map. My father had hit me because I had dared to write a note to a boy.

He had drawn for me (in the letter) a house which had a red roof and said that it was the house he was going to buy for me when we were married.

Stop it right there. Pope Francis was an adorable 12 year-old.

María Elena Bergoglio is the sister of Pope Francis.

She said:

He didn’t want to be Pope and when we chatted privately about it, we joked at the prospect and he would say ‘no, please no’.

María didn’t know anything about the young love her brother and Damonte shared, probably because the “romance did not prosper because of the opposition of her parents.”

Pope Francis never found love with any other woman after that. Could Damonte have been the woman who pushed him toward a life of priesthood?

[Source: Telegraph]