Paul Vallely, in his papal biography, Untying the Knots, claims that Pope Francis had a “conversion experience” during his Córdoba exile, and objects (Letters, 20/27 December 2014) to my refutation of that idea in my recent papal biography, The Great Reformer. He particularly objects to the use of my adjective “imagined”, saying it rests on the evidence of his interviewees. But I did not claim that Vallely invented the notion, only that it rests on a misreading of Bergoglio as a “conservative” who later became a “liberal”. The fact that some Argentines (mostly on the Left) believe it, doesn’t make it true. The Jesuits who were Bergoglio’s contemporaries who knew him well disagree with that assessment, among them the Jesuit