When Carmen Arevalo-Garazatua heard the identity of the new pope on her car radio, she had to pull over.
“I almost collapsed,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ it’s my pastor, pastor Roberto.”
Arevalo-Garazatua, 69, met Father Robert F. Prevost in 1994, when he was the director of the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo, Peru. She was in extreme emotional distress.
“I was going from a good place to a very bad time in my life,” said Arevelo-Garazatua, who immigrated to the U.S. in 2001 and is a parishioner of St. Bernadette Church in Springfield. “I felt like he touched my soul. He held my arm for 30 minutes and just listened with incredible empathy. I’ll never forget that.”
Father Prevost encouraged her to become active in Our Lady of Montserrat Church in Trujillo, and Arevalo-Garazatua dove in. She became a lector, joined the choir and a rosary group, and she took pride with other parish women in caring for the seminarians, especially with meals.
“I cooked for him, too,” she said. “I would keep a plate for him of turkey and applesauce that I would make with the cream of milk. He loved Peruvian food.”
Arevalo-Garazatua looks back on the five years she knew the man who would become Pope Leo XIV as a gift. “We loved him so much,” she said. “Father Roberto did not talk much, but you just had a natural instinct to love him. His personality was adorable.”
Almost a week after hearing the news that her beloved former pastor had become pope, Arevalo-Garazatua, who has retired and volunteers as a caregiver, cannot stop smiling.
“He’s such a humble man,” she said. “He treats all people like equals, with a great respect for everybody.”
Father Donald J. Rooney, pastor of St. Bernadette, is delighted that one of his longtime parishioners was a friend of the pope. “We’ve never experienced this before in America,” he said. “This must be what it’s like in Italy where so many people know who the pope is.”
The healing that came from Arevalo-Garazatua’s relationship with Pope Leo XIV offers a spiritual lesson, said Father Rooney. “All of us should pause for a moment and think about all the people we’ve touched in our lives, too, because you don’t think about it until after the fact,” he said. “Every chapter of our life has a whole different cast of characters.”
“I’m still shaking,” said Arevalo-Garazatua. “I still cannot believe that he’s the pope.”
