Pope Francis and his bond to Slovenia

Jorge Mario Bergoglio did not visit Slovenia as pope but he did visit as a Jesuit priest in his 30s when he had his first taste of potica - a pastry that he came to love and would forever associate with Slovenia.

The future pope visited Slovenia for the first time in 1970 when he spent a week with the Lazarists in Ljubljana as a guest of Franc Rode, the future archbishop of Ljubljana and cardinal, who like Bergoglio spent his youth in Argentina, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

"He spent a week with me. I showed him Bled, the Postojna Cave, he was everywhere," Rode, the 90-year-old cardinal, remembers the visit by the late pope as quoted by the newspaper Delo.

Back in Slovenia the next winter, Bergoglio visited the Golar family near Škofja Loka for a day. Their son Andrej worked as librarian at the Jesuit university and seminary in San Miguel, near Buenos Aires. The Golar family served him potica, a traditional Slovenian nut pastry roll.

Pope Francis was a big fan of potica and would often receive it as a gift from Slovenia. Ahead of Christmas last December as many as nine were delivered to him from Ptuj.

Thanks to him, potica made global headlines in 2017, when Pope Francis jokingly asked Slovenian-born US First Lady Melania Trump whether she fed her husband on potica.

His question caused quite a confusion with the global media, as the interpreters and later journalists mistook the Slovenian cake (pronounced as "po-teet-sah") for pizza. The Vatican eventually made it clear, with the help of a Slovenian journalist, that the pope was in fact a fan of potica and would always mention it when meeting people from Slovenia.

Remembering Bergoglio's visit in the 1970s, Rode told TV Slovenia that the future pope also loved the opera The Tsar's Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov that he took him to see in Ljubljana and would fondly remember it even 30 years on.

The pope knew Slovenia well also because of a sizeable Slovenian community in Argentina. He was an avid fan of San Lorenzo de Almagro, the football club from Boedo, the working class neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, and knew well its legendary goalkeeper Mirko Blažina (1925-2005), who was of Slovenian descent.

Former Slovenia international Andres - Andrej Vombergar also plays for San Lorenzo. When his father and mother took him and his two siblings to the Buenos Aires Cathedral in 2006 the Cardinal Bergoglio passed by and the father Marko told the children they should remember the man because he would be the pope one day.

Delo reports that the cardinal overheard him and asked laughingly whether this was some kind of prophecy. Marko Vombergar told him it was not prophecy but his immense wish. Bergoglio did become pope and was given Andrej Vombergar's national jersey as a gift by Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob in 2022.

Slovenians will have fond memories of the pope, be it believers or non-believers. In their tributes on his death on 21 April, the country's top officials remembered him as an inspiration for millions and as a fighter for justice and peace.