Pope comforts pregnant single woman

September 13, 2013 - In his instinctive outreach to the peripheries of society, Pope Francis continues to make occasional surprise calls to anguished Catholics around the world comforting them as they grapple with life’s intractable problems. Lately in one such case, the Pope was moved to hear the story of Anna Romano, who had written to him expressing her despair after falling pregnant by a boyfriend who abandoned her. Answering the call on her mobile phone on Sept. 3, the 35-year old sales assistant in a jewellery shop in the central Italian town of Arezzo said she was "speechless" to know it was Pope Francis greeting her. "At the beginning I thought it was a joke, but then he referred to the letter, which only my best friend and my parents knew about," she told Italy's Corriere della Sera daily. In her letter, addressed simply to "His Holiness Francis, Vatican City", Romano wrote that her boyfriend had revealed he was married when she told him she was pregnant. "He left me, telling me he had no intention of taking care of the baby," she said. The man also told her to have an abortion, advice she was determined to ignore. Forgetting about the letter, she departed for a holiday with her family, only to receive the call. “The call of a few minutes from Pope Francis has changed my life,” Romano said, adding, "The Pope told me I was very brave and strong to decide to keep my baby." Explaining to the Pope that she feared no priest would baptise her illegitimate child, the Pope told her that if she had any trouble he would personally baptize the child.