Father Juan Manuel Gutierrez had just finished Sunday morning Mass at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church in South LA on August 31 when one of his youngest parishioners ran up to give him a hug – and ask for an unusual favor.
“When you meet Pope Leo, can you tell him Natalie says hello?” asked the second grader, who goes to the parish’s Catholic school.
It was a bold request, but also a premature one.
Gutierrez wasn’t even sure if he’d make it to Rome that following week to witness the Sept. 7 canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati, a 20th century Italian blessed whose intercession has been officially recognized as responsible for the miraculous healing of Gutierrez’s torn Achilles tendon eight years ago.
And even if he did, a meeting with Pope Leo XIV seemed unlikely. But Gutierrez was moved by the childlike faith in front of him: Natalie didn’t say “if.” She said “when.”
“Natalie, I actually don’t think that I’ll be able to meet him,” Gutierrez told Natalie. “But if I ever do, I will tell him that you said hello.”
Ten days later on Sept. 10, Gutierrez found himself standing in the pouring rain in St. Peter’s Square after the Pontiff’s Wednesday General Audience, in line for a brief, personal audience with Leo himself.
“It was literally surreal, because I didn't know that I was going to encounter [the pope] until a few hours before that,” Gutierrez told Angelus after the meeting. “There were so many things that needed to happen in order for me to meet the pope.”
Many things, indeed.
Due to paperwork issues, Gutierrez didn’t get clearance to travel to Italy until Labor Day. He arrived in Rome three days later, where he was joined by family from Mexico and some friends from Los Angeles. One of the first things on his to-do list: meeting Wanda Gawronska, the 97-year-old niece of Frassati and longtime figurehead of the movement behind his canonization cause.
At the canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square that Sunday, Gutierrez concelebrated a few yards away from Leo, along with hundreds of other priests from around the world. He may have had special seating (behind the bishops’ section), but he was only one among the hundreds of dignitaries and guests associated with Frassati and the other Italian youth being canonized at the Mass, St. Carlo Acutis.
The pope was so close, yet so far away.
The next day, at the beginning of a Mass of Thanksgiving for Frassati’s canonization at Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Gutierrez was recognized by celebrant Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the 91-year-old Dean of the College of Cardinals, as the recipient of the miracle that had allowed for Frassati’s canonization, drawing applause and curious glances from attendees.
But there was another reason for Gutierrez to be excited that day: Gutierrez had just been given a last-minute appointment with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, who as Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints had overseen the final phase of Frassati’s sainthood process.
The appointment was made with the help of Msgr. Robert Sarno, the Brooklyn priest who’d investigated the story of the 2017 healing of Gutierrez’s ankle.
The next day, Gutierrez caught a taxi from the Capuchin convent where he’d been staying in Rome to St. Peter’s Square. Before he could enter the dicastery’s headquarters, he was stopped in the square by a family from Colombia. They’d recognized Gutierrez’s face from media interviews, and asked for a special blessing for their son, who suffers from a severe form of autism.
Inside Semeraro’s office, the Italian cardinal was astounded to learn that Gutierrez had had such a low-key role at the canonization. When asked if there might be a chance that the LA priest could meet Pope Leo at his weekly General Audience the next day, Semeraro threw his hands up.
“It’s too late,” said Semeraro. “But let me see what I can do.”
An hour later, Gutierrez got a phone call at lunch. It was the cardinal, with a message: Meet me tomorrow morning before the audience inside the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, the imposing, dark yellow building next to St. Peter’s that serves as the offices of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith — and the place where Pope Leo has lived in an apartment as both a cardinal and now (at least temporarily) as pope.
Inside the palazzo’s courtyard the next morning, Gutierrez waited for the cardinal to arrive as rain poured down outside. Once everyone was ready, Semeraro drew courteous bows from Vatican security as he brought Gutierrez past the Swiss Guards into St. Peter’s Square.
No ticket, no problem.
For Gutierrez, who wasn’t even a practicing Catholic when he immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico nearly 20 years ago, the impending one-on-one meeting with the Successor of Peter gave him plenty to think about: his mother’s death from cancer, his return to the Church, his call to be a priest, his ankle injury. So many strange, often difficult events had brought him to this point.
When it was Gutierrez’s turn to greet the pope, he knew what he wanted to say — but had only a few seconds to say them.
“Holy Father, my name is Father Juan Gutierrez, and I’m a priest for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” he began in Spanish. “I’m the one who received the healing miracle recognized for the canonization of Pier Giorgio Frasatti.”
Leo’s eyes opened wider.
After explaining how Cardinal Semeraro and a few others had helped make the meeting possible, Gutierrez began by telling Leo how before coming to Rome, a little girl had approached him after Mass with a message for the pope.
“At that time, I didn’t know if I was coming or not,” Gutierrez told Leo. “So I just told her ‘I don't know if I will meet him, but if I do, I will tell him you say hello.’ ”
The pope smiled. “Well, tell Natalie I say hello, too.”
Gutierrez also passed along a request from Cabrini pastor Father Christopher Felix for “a thought and a prayer” from the pope for his parish, especially its immigrant community during a time of fear amid this summer’s immigration raids in Southern California.
After a few more words about the immigration situation in LA, Gutierrez finished the conversation by pulling out from his jacket five limited edition baseball cards with Leo’s image — one for him, the others for some friends. He had planned to ask Leo to sign them, but then thought better of it.
“At least could you touch them?” asked Gutierrez.
The pope chuckled and extended his hand. Mission accomplished.
Afterwards, Gutierrez told Angelus he was struck by several things about the day. One of them was the pope’s facial expression during the minute-long conversation.
“I could see his gentleness, his serenity, his firmness, but also his love,” said Gutierrez. “Every time I would say something to him about our immigrant community [in LA], I could just see how, by his facial expression, he was feeling it deep within him.”
Gutierrez also found some poetic irony in the weather that day. To the consternation of his friends, the priest has always enjoyed rain. When he was welcomed to the Vatican that morning by heavy showers and gusts of wind, he took it as a sign.
“God has a love language with each one of us, and he knows mine,” said Gutierrez.
The morning of Gutierrez’s meeting with Cardinal Semeraro, his relatives caught a plane back to Mexico City. One of them, his younger sister Laura, told Angelus after the canonization that the weight of her brother’s role in history was still sinking in.
“How did a Mexican from the other side of the world receive this miracle that none of us expected?” Laura said she wonders to herself. “We never expected he would become a priest, much less receive some kind of a miracle like this.”
For now, Gutierrez will spend some time in Europe visiting places like Turin, where Frassati lived and is now buried, and Poland, where he’s been invited to share his testimony at a parish named after Frassati.
But that meeting with Leo, Gutierrez says, was “the cherry on top of the sundae” after the canonization.
“When God wants something to happen, he will go above and beyond all of those channels to do his will in our lives,” said Gutierrez. “We just need to trust and wait and do our part.”
