Cardinal Bergoglio

Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio; 17 December 1936 – 21 April 2025) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 13 March 2013 until his death in 2025. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first Latin American, and the first born or raised outside Europe since the 8th-century Syrian pope Gregory III.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a family of Italian origin, Bergoglio was inspired to join the Jesuits in 1958 after recovering from a severe illness. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 he was the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina. He became the archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the 2013 papal conclave elected Bergoglio as pope on 13 March. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Throughout his papacy, Francis was noted for his humility, emphasis on God's mercy, international visibility, commitment to interreligious dialogue, and concern for the poor, migrants, and refugees. Francis believed the Catholic Church should demonstrate more inclusivity to LGBTQ people, and stated that although blessings of same-sex unions are not permitted, individuals in same-sex relationships can be blessed as long as the blessing is not given in a liturgical context. Francis made women full members of dicasteries in the Roman Curia. Francis convened the Synod on Synodality, which was described as the culmination of his papacy and the most important event in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council. Francis was known for having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors by, for instance, choosing to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse rather than in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace used by previous popes. In addition, due to both his Jesuit and Ignatian aesthetic, he was known for favoring simpler vestments devoid of ornamentation, including refusing the traditional papal mozzetta cape upon his election, choosing silver instead of gold for his piscatory ring, and keeping the same pectoral cross he had as cardinal.

Concerning global governance, Francis was a critic of trickle-down economics, consumerism, and overdevelopment; he made action on climate change a leading focus of his papacy. He viewed capital punishment as inadmissible in all cases, and committed the Catholic Church to its worldwide abolition. Francis criticized the rise of right-wing populism and anti-immigration politics, calling the protection of migrants a "duty of civilization". Francis supported the decriminalization of homosexuality. In international diplomacy, Francis helped to restore full diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, negotiated a deal with the People's Republic of China to define Communist Party influence in appointing Chinese bishops, and encouraged peace between Israel and Palestinians, signing the Vatican's first treaty with the State of Palestine. In 2022 he apologized for the Church's role in the cultural genocide of Canadian Indigenous peoples in residential schools. From 2023 he condemned Israel's military operations in Gaza, calling for investigations of war crimes. Francis made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday before dying on 21 April 2025, Easter Monday. The 2025 papal conclave elected Leo XIV as Francis's successor on 8 May. Leo XIV became the second pope from the Americas, after Francis.

Early life

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on 17 December 1936 in Flores, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. He was the eldest of the five children of Mario José Bergoglio and Regina María Sívori. Mario Bergoglio was an Italian immigrant and an accountant from Piedmont. Regina Sívori was a housewife born in Buenos Aires to a family of northern Italian origin. Mario Bergoglio's family left Italy in 1929 to escape the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini. According to María Elena Bergoglio, the Pope's only living sibling, the family did not emigrate for economic reasons. His other siblings were Oscar Adrián, Marta Regina, and Alberto Horacio. His niece, Cristina Bergoglio, is a painter based in Madrid, Spain.

In the sixth grade, Bergoglio attended Wilfrid Barón de los Santos Ángeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Ramos Mejía, Buenos Aires Province. He then attended the technical secondary school Escuela Técnica Industrial Nº 27 Hipólito Yrigoyen and graduated with a chemical technician's diploma. In that capacity, he spent several years working in the food section of Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory where he worked under Esther Ballestrino. Earlier, he had been a bouncer and a janitor.

When he was 21 years old, after life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts, Bergoglio had part of a lung excised.

Priesthood

Training and early priesthood (1958–1973)

While on his way to celebrate the Spring Day, Bergoglio passed by a church to go to confession and was inspired by a priest. He then studied at the archdiocesan seminary, Inmaculada Concepción Seminary, in Villa Devoto, Buenos Aires, and, after three years, entered the Society of Jesus as a novice on 11 March 1958. Bergoglio said that, as a young seminarian, he had a crush on a girl and briefly doubted his religious career. As a Jesuit novice, he studied the humanities in Santiago, Chile.

After his novitiate, Bergoglio officially became a Jesuit on 12 March 1960 when he made the religious profession of the initial, perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience of a member of the order. In 1960, Bergoglio obtained a licentiate in philosophy from the Colegio Máximo de San José. He then taught literature and psychology at the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción, a high school in Santa Fe, from 1964 to 1965. In 1966, he taught the same courses at the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires.

In 1967, Bergoglio began his theological studies at Facultades de Filosofía y Teología de San Miguel. On 13 December 1969, he was ordained as a priest by Archbishop Ramón José Castellano. He served as the master of novices for the province there and became a professor of theology.

Bergoglio completed his final stage of spiritual training as a Jesuit, tertianship, at Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and took final vows as a Jesuit, including the fourth vow of obedience to missioning by the pope, on 22 April 1973.

Subsequent positions (1973–1986)

He was named provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina that July for a six-year term which ended in 1979. In 1973, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but his stay was shortened by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War.

After the completion of his term of office, he was named, in 1980, the rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel where he had studied. Before taking up this new appointment, he spent the first three months of 1980 in Ireland to learn English and stayed at the Jesuit Centre at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. He then served at San Miguel for six years until 1986 when, at the discretion of Jesuit superior-general Peter Hans Kolvenbach, he was replaced by someone more in tune with the worldwide trend in the Society of Jesus toward emphasizing social justice rather than his emphasis on popular religiosity and direct pastoral work.

Bergoglio then spent several months at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt, Germany, and considered possible dissertation topics. He settled on exploring the work of the German-Italian theologian Romano Guardini, particularly his study of "Contrast" published in his 1925 work '.

Return to Argentina (1986–1998)

Ultimately, however, Bergoglio did not complete a degree there and he returned to Argentina earlier than expected to serve as a confessor and spiritual director to the Jesuit community in Córdoba. As a student at the Salesian school, Bergoglio was mentored by Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Stefan Czmil. Bergoglio often rose hours before his classmates to serve Divine Liturgy for Czmil.

Bergoglio was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and was consecrated on 27 June 1992 as titular bishop of Auca, with Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, archbishop of Buenos Aires, serving as principal consecrator. He chose his episcopal motto to be , drawn from Saint Bede's homily on Matthew 9:9–13: "because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him". In 1992, Jesuit authorities asked Bergoglio not to live in Jesuit residences due to ongoing tensions with leaders and scholars; concerns about his "dissent", views on Catholic orthodoxy, and opposition to liberation theology; and his role as auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires.

On 3 June 1997, Bergoglio was appointed coadjutor archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Archbishop of Buenos Aires (1998–2013)

He became metropolitan archbishop after Quarracino's death on 28 February 1998. As archbishop, he established new parishes, restructured the archdiocese, led pro-life efforts, and formed a commission on divorces. One of Bergoglio's major initiatives as archbishop was to increase the church's presence in the shantytown (, or just ) slums of Buenos Aires. Under his leadership, the number of priests assigned to work in the shantytowns doubled, and he visited them himself. This work led to him being referred to as the " bishop", sometimes translated as the "slum bishop".

Early in his tenure as archbishop, Bergoglio sold the archdiocese's bank shares and moved its accounts to regular international banks. This ended the church's high spending habits, which had nearly led to its bankruptcy, and enforced stricter fiscal discipline. On 6 November 1998, while remaining archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was named Ordinary for Eastern Catholics in Argentina, who lacked a prelate of their own church. On Bergoglio's election to the papacy, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that Bergoglio understood the liturgy, rites, and spirituality of Shevchuk's Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and always "took care of our Church in Argentina" as Ordinary.

In 2000, Bergoglio was the only church official to reconcile with Jerónimo Podestá, a former bishop who had been suspended as a priest after opposing the Argentine Revolution military dictatorship in 1972. He also defended Podestá's wife from Vatican attacks on their marriage. That same year, Bergoglio said the Argentine Catholic Church needed "to put on garments of public penance for the sins committed during the years of the dictatorship" in the 1970s, during the Dirty War.

Bergoglio regularly celebrated the Holy Thursday foot-washing ritual in jails, hospitals, retirement homes, and slums. Bergoglio continued to be the archbishop of Buenos Aires after his elevation to the cardinalate in 2001. In 2007, shortly after Benedict XVI introduced new rules for pre–Vatican II liturgical forms, Bergoglio established a weekly Mass in this extraordinary form of the Roman Rite.

On 8 November 2005, Bergoglio was elected president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference for a three-year term (2005–2008), and re-elected on 11 November 2008. He remained a member of that commission's permanent governing body, the president of its committee for the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, and a member of its liturgy committee for the care of shrines. While head of the Argentine Catholic bishops' conference, Bergoglio issued a collective apology for his church's failure to protect people from the junta during the Dirty War. When he turned 75 in December 2011, Bergoglio submitted his resignation as archbishop of Buenos Aires to Pope Benedict XVI as required by canon law. As he had no coadjutor archbishop, he stayed in office, waiting for the Vatican to appoint a replacement.

As a bishop, he was no longer subject to his Jesuit superior. From then on, he no longer visited Jesuit houses and was in "virtual estrangement from the Jesuits" until after his election as pope.

Appointment as cardinal

On 21 February 2001, Pope John Paul II made Archbishop Bergoglio a cardinal, assigning him the title of cardinal priest of San Roberto Bellarmino. Bergoglio was installed there on 14 October. During his trip to Rome for the ceremony, he and his sister María Elena visited their father's hometown in northern Italy. As cardinal, Bergoglio was appointed to five administrative positions in the Roman Curia. He was a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; the Congregation for the Clergy; the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; the Pontifical Council for the Family; and the Commission for Latin America. Later that year, when Cardinal Edward Egan returned to New York following the September 11 attacks, Bergoglio replaced him as relator (recording secretary) in the Synod of Bishops, and, according to the ''Catholic Herald'', created "a favourable impression as a man open to communion and dialogue".

Cardinal Bergoglio was known for his personal humility, doctrinal conservatism, and commitment to social justice. His simple lifestyle—which included living in a small apartment rather than the elegant bishop's residence, using public transportation, and cooking his own meals—enhanced his reputation for humility. He limited his time in Rome to "lightning visits".

After Pope John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, Bergoglio attended his funeral and was considered one of the for succession to the papacy. He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. In the ''National Catholic Reporter'', John L. Allen Jr. reported that Bergoglio was a frontrunner in the 2005 conclave. In September 2005, the Italian magazine ''Limes'' published claims that Bergoglio had been the runner-up and main challenger to Cardinal Ratzinger at that conclave and that he had received 40 votes in the third ballot but fell back to 26 at the fourth and decisive ballot. Article gives numbers for the four votes; Ratzinger had most votes, followed by Bergoglio. The claims were based on a diary purportedly belonging to an anonymous cardinal who had been present at the conclave.Rubin, p. 13 According to the Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli, this number of votes had no precedent for a Latin American . ''La Stampa'' reported that Bergoglio was in close contention with Ratzinger during the election until he made an emotional plea that the cardinals should not vote for him. According to the source, Cardinal Bergoglio begged "almost in tears" ("quasi in lacrime" in Italian) According to Tornielli, Bergoglio made this request to prevent the conclave from delaying too much in the election of a pope.

As a cardinal, Bergoglio was associated with Communion and Liberation, a Catholic evangelical lay movement of the type known as associations of the faithful. He sometimes made appearances at the annual gathering known as the Rimini Meeting held during the late summer months in Italy. In 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio authorized the request for beatification—the third of four steps toward sainthood—for six members of the Pallottine community murdered in the San Patricio Church massacre. Bergoglio also ordered an investigation into the murders; 1984 testimony indicated that they were perpetrated by members of the Argentine Navy on the orders of Rear Admiral Rubén Chamorro.Martin Edwin Andersen, ''Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War"'', Westview Press, 1993, ; pp. 187–188

Argentine government relations

Dirty War

Bergoglio was the subject of allegations regarding the Argentine Navy's kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, in 1976, during Argentina's Dirty War. After being tortured in captivity, the priests were found alive months later outside Buenos Aires, drugged and partially unclothed. Bergoglio is widely reported to have failed to protect the priests, and to have dismissed them from the Society of Jesus days prior to their arrest. In 2005, Myriam Bregman, a human rights lawyer, filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing him of actual involvement in the kidnapping. While the complaint was eventually dismissed, the debate over Bergoglio's actions during the period has continued, with Argentine journalists relying on documents and statements from both priests and laypeople in reporting that contradict Cardinal Bergoglio's account.

Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the authorities that he endorsed their work. Yorio said in a 1999 interview that he believed that Bergoglio did nothing "to free us, in fact just the opposite". Two days after the election of Francis, Jalics issued a statement confirming the kidnapping and attributing the cause to a former lay colleague who became a guerrilla, was captured, then named Yorio and Jalics when interrogated. The following week, Jalics issued a second, clarifying statement: "It is wrong to assert that our capture took place at the initiative of Father Bergoglio ... Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio."

Bergoglio told his authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, that he worked behind the scenes for the priests' release; Bergoglio's intercession with dictator Jorge Rafael Videla on their behalf may have saved their lives. Bergoglio also told Rubin that he had often sheltered people from the dictatorship on church property, and once gave his own identity papers to a man who looked like him so that he could flee Argentina. The interview with Rubin, reflected in the biography , was the only time Bergoglio had spoken to the press about those events. Alicia Oliveira, a former Argentine judge, also reported that Bergoglio helped people flee Argentina during the rule of the junta. Since Francis became pope, Gonzalo Mosca and José Caravias have related accounts to journalists of how Bergoglio helped them flee the dictatorship.

Oliveira described Bergoglio as "anguished" and "very critical of the dictatorship" during the Dirty War. Oliveira met with him at the time and urged Bergoglio to speak out—he told her that "he couldn't. That it wasn't an easy thing to do." Artist and human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said: "Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship... Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship." Graciela Fernández Meijide, a member of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, also said that there was no proof linking Bergoglio with the dictatorship. She told the '' Clarín'' newspaper:

There is no information and Justice couldn't prove it. I was in the APDH during all the dictatorship years and I received hundreds of testimonies. Bergoglio was never mentioned. It was the same in the CONADEP. Nobody mentioned him as instigator or as anything.

Ricardo Lorenzetti, the president of the Argentine Supreme Court, said that Bergoglio was "completely innocent" of the accusations. Historian Uki Goñi pointed that, during early 1976, the military junta still had a good image among society, and that the scale of the political repression was not known until much later; Bergoglio would have had little reason to suspect that the detention of Yorio and Jalics could end in their deaths.

Fernando de la Rúa

Fernando de la Rúa replaced Carlos Menem as president of Argentina in 1999. As an archbishop, Bergoglio celebrated the annual Mass at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral

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