This has got to be one of the best Pope Francis stories ever. It's from his friend and confrere, Diego Fares (†2022). (Fares gets a big nod in the first pages of the Pope's Sacred Heart encyclical.)
“Pope Francis’ invitation to be shepherds, to have the smell of the sheep and not be princes or pilots, comes from 40 years ago, from when we were novices" and the then-Father Bergoglio was the Jesuit provincial and then seminary rector.
One of the seminarians walked "through the vegetable garden of the Massimo College, where there were pigs, cows and sheep, and he saw that Bergoglio, the rector, was helping a sheep give birth."
Surprised, the seminarian offered to help. The rector thought for a moment, took a lamb that the ewe had rejected and handed it over, saying, "Take care of it!"
Nonplussed, the seminarian asked how.
He was told to "warm up some milk and give it to the lamb with a bottle."
Fares continued: "For five months, this student had the lamb in his room, which took on the smell of sheep... The lamb followed him around the house, all the way to church and into the classrooms."
Then the future Pope told him: "I have put you to test and you have learned that if you take care of it, the sheep will follow you. This is what you must do."
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