JORGE Mario Bergoglio, the man this week elected as the first Latin American pope, reportedly turned to religion after he was spurned by his childhood sweetheart when they were both just 12 years old. 
 
 According to 76-year-old Amalia Damonte, Pope Francis once declared "If I can't marry you, I'll become a priest" after she rejected him during their childhood in Buenos Aires. "Luckily for him, I said no", she joked. 
 
 Speaking from her home, four doors down from where Francis grew up in Flores, Argentina, Damonte revealed her parents had kept the two apart because they disapproved of their budding romance. 
 
 "When we were young, he wrote me a letter and I didn't reply to him," she told the Argentinean press. "My father had hit me because I had dared to write a note to a boy." 
 
 Damonte's revelation came as the sister of the 266th pontiff, María Elena Bergoglio, said she was concerned her brother would face "infinite loneliness" in his new role. 
 
 She told the Daily Telegraph Francis had jokingly said "no, please no" at the prospect of being the next Pope. "I didn't want him to become Pope because he's going to be very far away and second because it is such a large responsibility. But I am also totally proud that he is the new Pope - because he's the first from outside Europe, because he's Latin American, he's Argentine and he's my brother," she said. 
 
 Despite his apparent reluctance, Francis, 76, was elected the Catholic Church's leader on Wednesday, replacing 85-year-old Benedict, who stepped down last month. Bergoglio inherits a church wrestling with an array of challenges that intensified during Pope Benedict's tenure - from growing competition from evangelical churches in the Southern Hemisphere to a priest shortage and a sexual abuse crisis. ·
– Apparently you can credit Amalia Damonte for Jorge Bergoglio becoming Pope Francis—or perhaps her father, reports the Week. When Bergoglio was just 12, he had a young "romance" with Damonte, writing a letter saying they would be married and drawing a picture of the house they would live in. She said he vowed to become a priest if Amalia, who lived near him in a Buenos Aires suburb, rejected the offer. However, Damonte's father wasn't about to stand for his 12-year-old daughter talking to boys, and slapped her for starting to write back. "I never saw him after that—my parents kept me away from him and did everything possible to separate us," says Damonte, adding that "it was a thing between children and totally pure." The Telegraph, meanwhile, catches up with the pope's sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, who says her brother was never jazzed about the prospect of leading the church. "He didn't want to be pope and when we chatted privately about it, we joked at the prospect and he would say, 'No, please no.'"