2023-07-06 20:58:00
July 6, 2023 / 1:58 p.m.
The little boy who managed to get past the security barrier at World Youth Day (WYD) Rio 2013 to emotionally embrace Pope Francis today is a seminarian preparing for the priesthood.
On July 26, 2013, Nathan de Brito, then 9 years old, managed to catch up with the popemobile carrying Pope Francis through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. He then hugged the Holy Father and told him that he wanted to be a priest.
Ten years later, he is in the propaedeutic seminary of the Archdiocese of Campo Grande, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. For Nathan, “remembering that meeting is always rekindling the flame of vocation.”
Nathan with his mother, Ana Paula. Credit: Personal archive.
Pope Francis visited Rio de Janeiro on the occasion of WYD in 2013. It was his first international trip, after being elected Pope in March of that year.
The photo of Nathan hugging Pope Francis soon went viral, becoming one of the most shocking images of the trip.
The young man assures that he is moved when he talks about that meeting. “It will be ten years from that great moment in my life. Of course it was not the awakening of my vocation, because I had wanted to be a priest for a long time. But it was, without a doubt, one more motivation within my vocation”, expressed Nathan in an interview with ACI Digital – the Portuguese agency of the ACI Group.
Nathan also said that since he was little he wanted to be a priest. “I liked to play at celebrating Mass, going to Mass.” At the age of five he began serving as an altar boy in Cabo Frio, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where he lived with his family.
“I was an altar server for many years and really enjoyed serving. I also really liked catechism and was in a hurry for the sacraments. I remember my first Eucharist a lot, which was the happiest day of my life, ”he assured.
Nathan recalled that at the age of seven he first said that he wanted to be just a priest. “Before he said that he wanted to be a teacher and a priest, a doctor and a priest, always something and a priest. But at the age of seven, one day when my father picked me up from school and asked me what I would be like when I grew up, I told him that he would only be a priest ”.
“I always emphasize that my call is to holiness. We are all called to holiness and each one has a call, a specific vocation. And I understand that my vocation is to the priesthood, so I said ‘yes’ to this vocation”, he expressed.
Nathan stressed that the Pope of his childhood was Benedict XVI and that his “charm for the vocation was precisely in him, because he saw in him an imposing figure, who spoke timidly, but who spoke very well, he was the man of the liturgy”.
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“When I was seven years old, I used to see the Masses in the Vatican and that filled my eyes,” he said.
When Pope Francis arrived in Brazil in 2013, he noted, he saw a Pontiff “very close to us.”
“When he was elected Pope, my love for the Church and for my vocation grew, because he was someone close to us. It is not that Benedict XVI was not. But I had a vision that Benedict XVI was the Pope who lived in the Vatican and was distant, ”he recalled.
Then came the opportunity to be close to the Pope, with Francis’ visit to Brazil for WYD Rio 2013. At that time, Nathan was living in Cabo Frio. He and his mother went to Aparecida, where the Pope was on July 24. But they couldn’t see it up close.
They then traveled to Rio de Janeiro, where Nathan managed to get close to Pope Francis on July 26. “And this being a priest is so important to me that when I met the Pope, I didn’t even tell him my name. I don’t know how he knew my name, but I didn’t say it. I just said, ‘Holy Father, I want to be a priest, I want to be like you,’” Nathan recalled.
“At that moment of the meeting with the Pope I could feel God’s enormous affection for me, telling me ‘my son, I love you’, in the arms of the one who welcomes us like a father. I had this very great experience of being welcomed by the Pope and that he accepted what I told him. He simply told me: ‘pray for me and I’ll pray for you,’” he said.
“Of course, we have an obligation to take care of our vocation. But knowing that such a special person is praying for us is something very special.”
At the beginning of 2020, Nathan de Brito entered the aspirancy of the Order of Friars Minor. He was in the Congregation until the end of last year, when he asked “to be transferred to the seminary of the Archdiocese of Campo Grande.”
“It is my duty as a person called to the priesthood to keep that flame burning, if that is God’s will. But those sparks that help us maintain our vocation, like the meeting with Pope Francis, are always very pleasant, very happy to remember ”, he concluded.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally posted on ACI Digital.
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