'Spiritual Son' of Pope Francis Recalls Their 50-Year Friendship
Ricardo Grzona recalled that Fr. Jorge Bergoglio ejected leftist seminarians from an Argentine Jesuit seminary.
A “spiritual son” of Pope Francis recalled their decades of friendship, as well as the late Pontiff’s devotion to the poor and marginalized.
Ricardo Grzona met Pope Francis, who was then Jesuit Father Jorge Bergoglio, in 1977. The priest was recommended to Grzona, who was then a high-school student, as a spiritual director.
While studying at the Colegio Maximo seminary near Buenos Aires, Grzona appeared destined to become a Jesuit priest.
But an encounter with the future Pope changed the course of his life.
“Father Bergoglio became my spiritual director and a good friend,” Grzona said in an interview with the Register. “While I thought I had a vocation to become a Jesuit, he showed me another path. He said that I could be an evangelist. He said, ‘Yes, you could become a priest, but there are few evangelists and even fewer lay evangelists. We want to tell the world that evangelization is in the hands of laypeople. We priests devote ourselves to sacramental life, but evangelization is the hands of laypeople.’”