The Strange Prayer Bergoglio Wrote Before He Was Ordained a Priest
"I want to believe in God the Father, who loves me as a son, and in Jesus, the Lord, who infused his Spirit into my life to make me smile and thus lead me to the eternal Kingdom of life.
I believe in the Church.
I believe that in history which was pierced by the gaze of God's love in the day of [Argentinean] spring, September 21, he came out to meet me to invite me to follow him.
I believe in my pain, infertile because of selfishness, in which I take refuge.
I believe in the pettiness of my soul that seeks to devour without giving... without giving.
I believe that the others are good and that I must love them without fear and without betraying them, never seeking security for myself.
I believe in religious life.
I believe that I want to love a lot.
I believe in a daily, burning death, which I flee from, but which smiles at me inviting me to accept it.
I believe in God's patience, welcoming, good, like a summer night.
I believe that Dad is in heaven, next to the Lord.
I believe that Father Duarte (*) is also there, interceding for my priesthood.
I believe in Mary, my Mother, who loves and will never leave me alone.
And I hope in the surprise of each day in which love, strength, betrayal and sin will be manifested, that they may always accompany me until that definitive encounter with that marvelous face that I do not know how it is, from which I continually run away, but which I want to know and love. Amen".
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(*) P. Carlos B. Duarte Ibarrache: the priest who confessed him on September 21, 1953, the day of the discovery of his vocation.
