One isn't born a saint, says school nun of pope as a boy

AT THE school in Buenos Aires where he started his religious journey at the young age of 5, the nuns remember the boy who would later become Pope Francis as “mischievous”.

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A boisterous child, he played football with his friends in the courtyard and sprinted up and down the marble stairs.

“They say he was rather mischievous,” recounted Teresa Rovira, a teacher at the Nuestra Senora de la Misericordia kindergarten where then-Jorge Bergoglio enrolled in the early 1940s.

“One is not born a saint, one becomes a saint,” the nun chortled.

Rovira was also a child at the time, but has heard many stories told by older nuns about the boy who would go on to become one of the most famous men in the world - ruling the Catholic Church for 12 years until his death Monday aged 88.

Misericordia is in the Argentine capital's Flores neighbourhood, where Francis was born and where he found his love of God, the poor, tango and football.