March 14, 2024 / 04:30 PM
In 1957, an Italian nun saved the life of a 20-year-old young man who would become the Vicar of Christ on earth. She died in 1995, her burial place had been forgotten in time, but yesterday—March 13—a delegation informed Pope Francis that they had found the mortal remains of Sister Cornelia Caraglio.
The Dominican nun was working as a nurse in Buenos Aires (Argentina), when the future Pope – who was in his second year of studies at the diocesan seminary – was admitted seriously affected by pneumonia. Young Bergoglio “had a liter and a half of water taken out of his lung” and his serious condition was such that he was “fighting between life and death” for months.
When the seminarian was about to die, Sister Caraglio – contradicting the doctors – administered double the prescribed dose, because her experience as a nursing nun indicated that the patient would not survive. This, in the end, resulted in the cure of the future Pope, who ended up having the upper lobe of his right lung removed, which was infected.