A 44-year-old woman from Argentina said that, after writing a letter to Pope Francis telling him that she had been raped by a local police officer, the Pope called her personally to tell her, “You are not alone.”
“The Pope told me he receives thousands of letters each day but that what I wrote moved him and touched his heart,” the woman said in an interview with the National University of Cordoba’s Canal 10 TV station.
“When I heard the Pope’s voice, it was like feeling the hand of God,” she said.
The woman explained that, in her letter, she asked the Holy Father for help and explained that she had been raped on two occasions by a police officer, who later threatened her.
On Sunday afternoon, her cellphone rang, and when she asked who it was, the voice said, “It’s the Pope.”
“I was petrified,” she said.
The conversation lasted about half an hour and centered on “faith and trust.”
“The Pope listened attentively to my story,” the woman said. “I’ll do anything now to go to the Vatican. He told me he would meet with me.”
The woman told the television station that, so far, she has not received justice, alleging local officials have covered up the crime, refused to hear her story and even gave a promotion to the alleged perpetrator.
“Now I know that I am not alone, and I will pick myself up again,” she said. “The Pope told me that I am not alone and that I should have faith that justice will be done.”
The phone call is the latest in a series of similar personal phone calls that Pope Francis has made since he became pope in March.
Other recipients of phone calls from Francis include an Italian man who has struggled to forgive God after the murder of his brother, a young doorman at the Jesuit motherhouse in Rome, the Pope’s shoemaker in Argentina and the owner of the kiosk in Buenos Aires that delivered his daily paper.