A Menno friend of Francis



Canadian Mennonite spoke with Betty Puricelli of Toronto Mennonite New Life Church about her late husband Adolfo’s connections with Pope Francis.

Like Adolfo Puricelli, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became pope in 2013, was born in 1936 and was raised Catholic in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The two attended two different seminaries together, the Facultades de Filosofía y Teología de San Miguel and the Jesuit seminary, Inmaculada Concepción Seminary.

At the second seminary, Adolfo was counselled that “his future was in the world,” that he should explore options outside the priesthood. For a time, he worked with the American Bible Society and eventually came to Canada where he established the Toronto Mennonite New Life Centre and pastored the Toronto Mennonite New Life Church until only a few years before his death in 2018.

Adolfo stayed in contact with his schoolmate, however. Betty Puricelli recalls a time when Adolfo returned to Buenos Aires for a short visit and tried to see Bergoglio, then a rising leader at the seminary where he had studied. “Two or three seminarians who had been at school with Adolfo and Bergoglio were his secretaries. They wouldn’t let Adolfo see him. They said he was too busy. Adolfo was rather upset, and he wrote Bergoglio a letter and explained why so-and-so wouldn’t let him in, adding, ‘I wanted to greet you and give you a hug.’ Adolfo knew where Bergoglio’s family lived and he gave the letter to Bergoglio’s mother and said, ‘Please give this to Bergoglio,’ and she did. The pope answered, a beautiful letter. He said, ‘We’re called to love, but sometimes it is very difficult to love everybody.”

While Bergoglio had always lived the simple, modest lifestyle for which he became noted as the pope—“Absolutely through and through no luxury,” Betty says—in Bergoglio’s early years as a young Jesuit priest, he “could be rather dictatorial, according to my husband.” The church asked Bergoglio to take a year’s absence to reflect on the way he dealt with others. “That year changed his life entirely. He became more and more gentle.”

Betty Puricelli recalled hearing about a priest who went to Bergoglio concerned because he had fallen in love with a woman. As she tells the story, Bergoglio said, “Well, just become an evangelical pastor. Then you can marry and follow your calling.”

Bergoglio’s openness to working with other Christian denominations went back to his early years as a Jesuit where he was one of the organizers of a meeting of Christians of various denominations in Buenos Aires during the post-Vatican II era. Among those who met with him were two of Betty’s sisters.

Adolfo and Betty happened to be in Buenos Aires in 2013 during the election of a new pope. They knew Bergoglio was among the cardinals at the Vatican, but they were in the Ezeiza International Airport when large television screens began showing white smoke coming out of the Vatican. Betty recalls, “They said, ‘The next pope is Jorge Mario Bergoglio.’ Adolfo just started bawling his eyes out. It was a very emotional moment.” She adds that, apparently, when Bergoglio was elected pope, he said, humourously, to the other cardinals, “May the Lord forgive you.”

For Betty, this was an example of the porteño humour shared by people from Buenos Aires, including Adolfo. “I feel it helped all of us through those terrible years with the military. We were living on tenterhooks. You never knew when they might come into your house and take somebody.”

She recalls a time during the 1970s when Bergoglio gave permission to a group of men to hide in the seminary while they organized a boat that would take them to safety in Uruguay. One night at midnight, the seminarians smuggled the men out of the seminary and onto the boat; the very next day, the police raided the seminary but found no one.

Betty herself never met the pontiff, but she corresponded with him after the death of Adolfo in 2018, letting him know that his old schoolmate had died. Pope Francis replied to her letter, saying, “I remember him warmly, and I will pray for you.”  Of the pope’s death on Easter Monday, April 20, Betty says, “He wanted to die with his boots on—and he did.”



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