Pope Leo moved by testimony of woman abandoned as a child due to her disability

Marta Torres is 78 years old and her deep blue eyes seem to pierce through whoever listens to her. She moves about in a wheelchair and due to her physical limitations, she is always looking upward.

Pope Leo XIV was visibly moved when speaking to her during his Nov. 9 visit to the Little Cottolengo Don Orione of Claypole in Buenos Aires, where she has lived for years.

Born blind and with cerebral palsy, she was abandoned by her mother when she was still a child, just a day before celebrating her birthday. “She left my house and never came back,” she told Leo XIV, who listened to her with the tenderness of a father.

Her illness turned her life into an uphill, difficult path, she said. For decades, she spent hours bedridden in a hospital, while unsuccessfully seeking a place where she could live on a permanent basis and receive the care she needed.

“I went around to many places in order to find a place to live, but those places were temporary and not suitable for me,” she explained.

That long search came to an end when she discovered the Little Cottolengo Don Orione of Claypole, an institution founded by St. Louis Orione that welcomes people with disabilities and in…