A little-known connection between Pope Francis and Co Cavan has been brought to prominence following the pontiff's death on Easter Monday at the age of 88.
The connection relates to a missionary nun from the parish of Crosserlough, near Kilnaleck, in the south of the county.
Sister Oliva Maria, born Susan Cusack on 1 January 1889, was one of six children who lived on a small farm with their parents, Philip and Ellen Cusack.
At the age of 20, she left home to train as a nurse and midwife in Paris with the Little Sisters of the Assumption.
Sr Oliva initially worked with the religious order in the French cities of Reims and Saint-Étienne before travelling to Argentina in 1923.
She then moved to the neighbourhood of Flores.
It was there that she visited the home of two Italian immigrants, Jose Bergoglio and Regina Maria Sivori.
The Bergoglio family, who lived in Buenos Aires, had called the Little Sisters of the Assumption for help when they were expecting their first child in December 1936.
Having left Co Cavan all those years previous, Sr Olivia could never have known that she would end up caring for a newborn, who would one day grow up to the be the leader of the Catholic Church.
Author Matt Moran researched the life story of Sr Oliva and established the link between the Irish missionary nun and Pope Francis.
Mr Moran said that he first became aware of the connection when Fr Dermod McCarthy, the former Editor of Religious Programmes at RTÉ, referenced it in passing during a televised commentary of the papal mass in Phoenix Park during Pope Francis's visit to Ireland in 2018.
He said: "The question that hit me immediately was well what congregations were in Argentina, and Buenos Aires in particular, in the 1930s.
"One of the ones that showed up, I think there were only two, was the Little Sisters of the Assumption so now I had the congregation and that was the first lead."
At the time, Mr Moran had recently published a book about the legacy of Irish missionaries and had also served as chairperson of Misean Cara, a charity which supports missionaries.
He said this provided him with the local knowledge and sources that he needed to identify Sr Oliva's records after paying a visit to the order's house in Blackpool, Co Cork.
"The difficulty with them was they had a record of Sr Oliva but I had a name Susan Cusack and the two things didn’t gel," he said.
"But they knew at that stage what the connection with the Pope was, not from their own knowledge or their own records, but it was he [the pope] who told them about it," he added.
Pope Francis maintained close contact with the order and after he was appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he visited the community regularly.
In a book to the mark the 150th anniversary of the Little Sisters of the Assumption in 2015, Pope Francis wrote the foreword.
He said: "I have many memories tied to these religious women who, as silent angels enter the homes of those in need, work patiently, look after, help and then silently return to their convent.
"They follow their rule, pray and then go out to reach the homes of those in difficulty, becoming nurses and governesses, they accompany children to school and prepare meals for them."
Sr Oliva later moved to Rosario in 1963, spent a year in the Argentinian city of Sante Fe and then lived in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, for four years.
She spent the final seven years of her ministry in Muniz, a town near Buenos Aires, where she died on 31 October 1975, at the age of 86. She is also buried in the town.
Mr Moran said Sr Oliva made the journey home to visit her family in Co Cavan on at least one occasion.
"I contacted Sr Olivia’s grandniece and spoke to her and they didn’t know that much about the Pope part of it, in fact, they didn’t know anything, as far as I recall about that, but they knew she was there," he said.
"She was home once that they can remember. In those days, nuns didn’t come home because number one, the air transport from South America was such, and they didn’t have the money," he added.
Mr Moran said the "best information" that the current generation of the family has is that "she was only home once, maybe a second time, but certainly once".