Pope Francis has received proof of the burial site of the nun who saved his life in his youth in Argentina

He Pope francesco received the documentation certifying its location this Wednesday at the Vatican burial of the nun who saved his life in his youth, 66 years ago, when he suffered from severe pneumonia. This is the Italian sor Cornelia Caragliowhose ashes were found in the city of Buenos Aires Blackbirdafter a long investigation.

This morning, after the general audience, the Argentine pontiff was informed by the expert in the history of Italian emigration, Orsola Appendino, of his investigations to find the place where this nun rests, the official media reported. News from the Vatican.

Sister Cornelia was one of two nuns who the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio participated in Argentina when it was hospitalized in 195721 years old, due to a serious pneumonia so in the end they had to remove part of his lung.

On several occasions, Francisco remembered the nun who took care of him and who “knew better than the doctor what the patients needed”, as he himself recalled in his book Let’s Dream Together (2020), with his reflections on the pandemic .

“I will always be indebted to them.. They fought for me until the end, until I recovered. They taught me what it means to use science and know how to go further, to respond to concrete needs”, the pontiff said in those memoirs.

Over time, the paths of the nurse and the patient separated and Bergoglio embarked on the ecclesiastical career that would lead him to become the first Latin American pope in history, even if he never forgot her and on February 7 he received his relatives, encouraging them to find the place of his burial. Today Orsola Appendino was able to give him the documentation certifying the place where the nun rests and Francisco felt “very happy”according to the same source.

The expert, a scholar of twentieth-century emigration from Italian Piedmont, the land of Bergoglio’s parents and ancestors, managed to find the tomb by speaking with the Dominican nuns of the convent in the Piedmont municipality of Mondovì (north), where Sister Cornelia had been format.

The building is currently a resting place for elderly nuns but, thanks to the mother superior, Sister Antonella Olivero, Appendino was able to speak with two Argentine nuns who lived for 35 years with Sister Cornelia, Josefina Solioz and Ana Teresa Viola.

They were both nuns, aged 82 and 84 respectively, who cared for her organizing Sister Cornelia’s funeral in 1995and despite their advanced age they clearly remembered what happened.

At first, according to her testimony, Sister Cornelia was buried in the Merlo cemetery, in the province of Buenos Aires, but then, in February 2023, They decided to cremate his body and transfer it to the cinerary of the parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Merlo..

This Wednesday the Pope was able to discover where the nun who saved his life rests and received a letter from Sister Josefina and Sister Ana Teresa in which they explain some of their memories: “She is a very merciful saint”, one of them assures him in the letter.their.