The love story that led a priest to marry a nun: “I didn’t want a life without her”

Mercedes Tarragona was 22 years old and Daniel Genovesi, 26. She was a nun, a sister of the Mercedarias del Niño Jesús congregation. He is a Catholic priest. The setting: Venado Tuerto, Santa Fe (Argentina). His love story –yes, love- will be published this year in an autobiographical book written by Daniel, and the production company of an American content distributor is already in negotiations to create an audiovisual miniseries based on this story.

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Mercedes explains with much didactic and emotion: “What happened was that I lived in a little box and I was fine in that little box. But when I met Daniel, he opened windows for me. And there was a lot of light outside, a lot of beautiful things outside”.

Mercedes, who had been in the convent since she was 17, had never been educated to understand her emotions. He compared what he began to feel for Daniel with the story of Saint Scholastica and Saint Benedict, two saints who were spiritual friends. Despite not knowing that what she felt was love, she could identify that she wanted to spend all her time with Daniel. Moreover, it was a necessity.

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For Daniel, it was also not obvious that he was falling in love with Mercedes, I had simply started working with her and by spending time with her, what I felt grew. He had never felt dissatisfied with his duties as a priest.

Daniel and Mercedes when they wore the habits. (Photo: The Nation).

“I had never fallen in love. I never even had a girlfriend before.”bill Daniel. They both believe that had they known what they were feeling, they probably wouldn’t have let it happen. But in this case, the affection grew without obstacles or restrictions. It even happened that Daniel wanted to call Mercedes at Christmas, because he wanted to share the emotion he felt on the morning of the celebration.

as if it were destiny

Even if they didn’t plan to see each other, they still met. As by accident they ended up in circumstances where you spent hours together, without them having looked for it. It was as if the madness of love changed everything around them so that they could spend time in each other’s company.

“We have thousands of anecdotes of meetings and reunions that were not organized by usDaniel recalls.

Mercedes left the convent, giving up her path as a nun, and in theory I would never again cross paths with Danielbut he invited her to Venado Tuerto, a city in Santa Fé, Argentina, to work with him in the city’s diocese.

“I went with little pants and a leather jacket“, bill Mercedes. That is, she was wearing shorts and a leather jacket, because she had already given up the official spiritual path. For Mercedes, the doubt remained as to whether Daniel would love her without having been ordered, he was afraid that he was not interested in her, but in the role that she used to play.

Daniel and Mercedes once came out of the clergy. (Photo: The Nation=.

Although Daniel fell in love with Mercedes when she was wearing the nun’s habit, he had fallen in love with her when he met her. Of her personality and her way of thinking. In the end, the fact that she had changed clothes didn’t change that he had already been captivated by her being. When he noticed that she had decided to accompany him to another city, even without her staying within the religious system, he decided to change his life.

“Mercedes left her world to come to mine, and when I could no longer live in my world, I chose to leave that world of mine that was familiar to me to start one together”, explains the former priest. She had explained to him that she could not continue in the emotional situation in which she was, in which she loved him, but she could not be with him.

She did not go out of order for Daniel, but admits that part of why she no longer felt happy living with the habit lay in how she was feeling about it. When Mercedes warned that he would leave Venado Tuerto, Daniel realized that he did not want a life without her.

“It was just making the decision to go down a path together.” A year after Mercedes resigned from the convent, Daniel left the clergy. He made his last celebration of a mass, and the following Monday he had delivered the letters with which he resigned from the curia.

life outside the clergy

They decided to start from scratch, in a city where nobody knew them, so they went to the capital, Buenos Aires. Those were difficult times when they just began to live outside the clergy, because they knew nothing of the world; how to dress or comb their hair, they didn’t know about music. Everything they had learned was related to their spiritual path.

A friend of Daniel’s helped them in those first moments. He explained to them how to behave, and to talk about the everyday, instead of the transcendental and profound topics that they always touched on.

“A few months after being together I became pregnant, and we lost that son, he was born and died two hours later”, tells Mercedes. She explains that they had to learn many things together in those early years. From how to work, to having a healthy sexual and emotional life, to dealing with the loss of a child together. In those years, they learned to be the net that held and trapped the other.

Daniel Genovesi and Mercedes Terragona with their daughters, Camila and Maria Clara. (Photo: The Nation).

They eventually converted to Anglicanism, as Daniel again felt called by the spiritual. Away from Catholicism, both were able to find a path with God that allowed them to be married and enjoy their daughters, while Daniel could exercise the priesthood. Mercedes felt that she could heal the pains in her past.

With ‘heal your past’, Mercedes refers to the bad experiences she had with some members of the Catholic clergy who did not see favorably that both had left their ministries. And they neither saw nor knew how to value that this was an honest love between a man and a woman who had decided to live their relationship with legitimacy, without secrecy, without ‘half’, a decision that did not detract at all from the Love for God that both felt. .

Daniel decided to write a letter to Pope Francis, asking him what he would do with those who had resigned from the priesthood but continued on the path of faith. He invited him to look for men who, like him, believed in the providence of the Curia. Providentially, he was able to get the letter to the Vatican and he had the grand gesture of writing me a reply.

Finally, the Pope replied that it was true, that he recognized that there were many like Daniel. And that detail decided to include it in the biography that is now being edited: ‘Dear brother’.

Recently, Daniel and Mercedes celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. (Photo: The Nation).

love has no borders

The South American Chamber of Bishops invited Daniel to take over as Anglican Bishop of Uruguay. “This was in September 2018. A month later, we said goodbye to Argentina celebrating our silver anniversary with the renewal of our vows.” Mercedes went with him as a missionary.

“When you make a decision, doors open that would never have opened if you hadn’t made that decision.”, Mercedes says that they have that phrase in their fridge. She believes that this was the path that God had for them, because all the doors were opened for them to help others, and continue on their spiritual path.

Mercedes (53) and Daniel (57) are married and have two daughters: Camila (23) and María Carla (26). The couple resides in Punta del Este, where he is an Anglican bishop and both have founded the Soul Institute, through which – as professional therapists – they help people from all over the world. “Mechi” is a trainer for the Mother Union Parenting Program, the only one in Latin America, and is a specialist in psychogenealogy and a master’s degree in neurolinguistic programming. Daniel has studied psychology, has an MBA in Human Resources Management and has a professorship in theology and philosophy.And they continue to love each other madly, which is no small thing.

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Source: Elcomercio