Pope Francis, the first man in the modern era from outside Europe
to lead the Roman Catholic Church, prizes compassion, humility and
simplicity — so much that he gave up his chauffeur in Argentina and took
the bus to work.
He is the first pope to be a member of the
Society of Jesus, a Catholic order founded in the 16th century by St.
Ignatius Loyola. Its members, known as Jesuits, take a vow of poverty
and are known for their work among the poor and their scholarship.
During an economic crisis that gripped his home country over the last
decade, Francis, then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio, asserted himself
as a champion of the least fortunate and a defender of social justice.
“We
live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most
yet reduced misery the least,” Bergoglio told Latin American bishops in
2007, according a recent profile in the National Catholic Reporter. “The
unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social
sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller
life for so many of our brothers.”
The new pope is known to be
conservative on social issues. He has opposed abortion and gay
marriage, and in 2010 he drew the ire of Argentina’s president when he
said that gay adoption was a form of discrimination against children.
Argentina
in 2010 became the first country in Latin America to legalize gay
marriage. During the debate that preceded the change, Bergoglio called
the bill “a plan to destroy God’s plan.”
“This is no mere legislative bill,” he said. “It is a move by the father of lies to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
Argentine
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner shot back that the
then-cardinal was speaking in terms “really reminiscent of the times of
the Inquisition.”
As archbishop, Bergoglio had the option to live
in a palace but chose a simple apartment, according to the National
Catholic Reporter. He gave up a limousine for the bus, and cooks his own
meals.
In the first act of his papacy, he chose the name Francis,
becoming the namesake of St. Francis of Assisi, who gave up his riches
and chose a life of poverty and prayer.
He was born in Buenos
Aires on Dec. 17, 1936, his father an Italian railway worker. He was
elevated to cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II.
At 76, he had
been considered by some observers too old for the job — particularly
following Benedict, who said that at 85 he was no longer healthy enough
to lead the church.
Francis has only one lung, the other removed because of an infection when he was a teenager.
Still, Egan said: “I can assure you that he is not feeble in any way.”
His
official biographer has said that Francis has both keen political
instincts and self-effacing humility, and that he would encourage a kind
of shoe-leather evangelism within the church.
He is known to walk the
streets of Buenos Aires to talk to the people.
He told priests in
Argentina last year: “Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and
share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out
and share, go out and ask. Become the word in body as well as spirit.”
Perhaps
helping him overcome the traditional reluctance to elect a Jesuit pope,
he fell out of favor among some Jesuits in Argentina after he was
elected to the title of Jesuit provincial in 1973.
Argentina was ruled in the late 1970s by a brutal military
dictatorship, and many Jesuits were drawn to a progressive activist
movement within the church known as liberation theology. Church leaders
backed the dictatorship publicly, and Bergoglio discouraged priests from
political activism.
Two of his Jesuit priests who followed the
liberation theology movement were kidnapped from the slums by the
military regime in 1976. Bergoglio personally appealed to the dictator,
Jorge Videla, and had them freed. One of the priests later accused
Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads in the
first place.
Bergoglio
told his biographer, Sergio Rubin, that he often hid people on church
property during the regime years and once gave his own identity papers
to a man to help him get out of the country.
He later was sent to a
school in northern Argentina to teach high school chemistry, an
assignment seen as a type of exile, before the archbishop of Buenos
Aires recalled him to be his auxiliary bishop.
“He’s a strong man,
a man who can put up with criticism,” said George Weigel, NBC News’
Vatican analyst. “Cardinal Bergoglio put up with a lot of criticism from
his brother Jesuits for many years.”
Francis earned a degree in
chemistry and was ordained a priest in December 1969. He was named
archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998.
He was said to be the
runner-up the last time cardinals met to choose a pope. An anonymous
account of the 2005 conclave said that he had the support of some of the
more liberal cardinals before giving up the fight and telling his
backers to vote for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI.
The
account was attributed to a cardinal who leaked his diary to an Italian
publication. It said that Francis, then Bergoglio, amassed 40 votes,
more than half of what he would have needed for election, but still
trailed Benedict after three ballots. His candidacy faltered on the
fourth ballot, the diary said.
As Bergoglio cast his ballot
beneath Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” the account said: “He had his
face fixed on the image of Christ judging the souls at the end of time. A
suffering face that implored: God, don’t to this to me.”
The cardinal
later declined to comment on the account.
By choosing a name no
pope had chosen before, he may be signaling an era of rebirth for a
church troubled by corruption and a sexual abuse crisis.
“We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church,” the new pope said before the conclave, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
“It’s true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every
man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains
closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church
that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that’s sick because
it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former.”