Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936 in Flores, Buenos Aires. He was the eldest of five children of Mario José Bergoglio and Regina María Sívori. Before joining the Jesuits, Bergoglio worked as a bar bouncer and as a janitor sweeping floors, and he also ran tests in a chemical laboratory. In the only known health crisis of his youth, at the age of 21 he suffered from life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts. He had part of a lung excised shortly afterwards. Bergoglio has been a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo de Almagro football club. Bergoglio is also a fan of the films of Tita Merello, neorealism, and tango dancing, with an "intense fondness" for the traditional music of Argentina and Uruguay known as the milonga.
Bergoglio found his vocation to the priesthood while he was on his way to celebrate the Spring Day. He passed by a church to go to confession, and was inspired by the priest. Bergoglio studied at the archdiocesan seminary, in Buenos Aires, and, after three years, entered the Society of Jesus as a novice on 11 March 1958. Bergoglio has said that, as a young seminarian, he had a crush on a girl he met and briefly doubted about continuing the religious career. 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.
He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1973, shortly after being named provincial superior, but his stay was shortened by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. Before taking up this new appointment, he spent the first three months of 1980 in Ireland to learn English, staying at the Jesuit Centre at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. He was removed as rector by the Jesuit superior-general Peter Hans Kolvenbach because Bergoglio's policy of educating the young Jesuits in direct pastoral work and in popular religiosity was opposed to the worldwide trend in the Society of Jesus of emphasizing social justice based on sociological analysis, especially promoted by the Centro de Investigaciones y Accion Social (CIAS).
In Germany, he saw the painting Mary Untier of Knots in Augsburg and brought a copy of the painting to Argentina where it has become an important Marian devotion. 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 Mass for Czmil.
Bergoglio was asked in 1992 by Jesuit authorities not to reside in Jesuit houses, because of continued tensions with Jesuit leaders and scholars, a sense of Bergoglio's "dissent", views of his Catholic orthodoxy and his opposition to theology of liberation, and his work as auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. From then on, he did not visit Jesuit houses and was in "virtual estrangement from the Jesuits" until after his election as Pope.
In 1998, Bergoglio became Metropolitan Archbishop of Buenos Aires. One of Bergoglio's major initiatives as archbishop was to increase the Church's presence in the slums of Buenos Aires. Under his leadership, the number of priests assigned to work in the slums doubled. This work led to him being called the "Slum Bishop".
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 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 made it his custom to celebrate the Holy Thursday ritual washing of feet in places such as jails, hospitals, retirement homes or slums. 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.
In 2001, Archbishop Bergoglio was created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II. When he traveled to Rome for the ceremony, he and his sister María Elena visited the village in northern Italy where their father was born. Cardinal Bergoglio became known for personal humility, doctrinal conservatism, and a commitment to social justice. A simple lifestyle contributed to his reputation for humility. He lived in a small apartment, rather than in the elegant bishop's residence in the suburb of Olivos. He took public transportation and cooked his own meals. He limited his time in Rome to "lightning visits". He was known to be devoted to St. Therese of Lisieux, and he enclosed a small picture of her in the letters he wrote, calling her "a great missionary saint".
After Pope John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, Bergoglio attended his funeral and was considered one of the papabile for succession to the papacy. Elected at the age of 76, Francis was reported to be healthy and his doctors have stated that his missing lung tissue, removed in his youth, does not have a significant impact on his health. Francis is the first Jesuit pope. This was an unexpected appointment, because of the tense relations between the Society of Jesus and the Holy See. He is also the first from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.
As pope, his manner is less formal than that of his immediate predecessors: a style that news coverage has referred to as "no frills", noting that it is "his common touch and accessibility that is proving the greatest inspiration." On the night of his election, he took the bus back to his hotel with the cardinals, rather than be driven in the papal car. The next day, he visited Cardinal Jorge María Mejía in the hospital and chatted with patients and staff. At his first media audience, the Saturday after his election, the Pope said of Saint Francis of Assisi: "The man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man", and he added "[h]ow I would like a poor Church, and for the poor".
In addition to his native Spanish, Francis is also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), he speaks fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the "everyday language" of the Holy See), German, French, Portuguese, English, and he understands the Piedmontese language and some Genoese. Francis chose not to live in the official papal residence in the Apostolic Palace, but to remain in the Vatican guest house, in a suite in which he can receive visitors and hold meetings. He is the first pope since Pope Pius X to live outside the papal apartments. Francis still appears at the window of the Apostolic Palace for the Sunday Angelus.
Bergoglio was elected pope on 13 March 2013, the second day of the 2013 papal conclave, taking the papal name Francis. Francis was elected on the fifth ballot of the conclave. Instead of accepting his cardinals' congratulations while seated on the Papal throne, Francis received them standing, reportedly an immediate sign of a changing approach to formalities at the Vatican. During his first appearance as pontiff on the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica, he wore a white cassock, not the red, ermine-trimmed mozzetta used by the previous two popes. He also wore the same iron pectoral cross that he had worn as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, rather than the gold one worn by his predecessors.
After being elected and choosing his name, his first act was bestowing the Urbi et Orbi blessing to thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square. Before blessing the crowd, he asked those in St. Peter's Square to pray for his predecessor, "the bishop emeritus of Rome" Pope Benedict XVI, and for himself as the new "bishop of Rome".
In 2016, while in Mexico, Pope Francis made international headlines for criticizing U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Francis said of Donald Trump, "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel." Trump responded saying "For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful." Father Federico Lombardi defended the Pope's remarks, saying that they weren't by any means "a personal attack, nor an indication of who to vote for".
On 19 March 2016, Pope Francis became the first Pope to create an Instagram account. He broke records after having gained over one million followers in under twelve hours of the account being up. On 8 January 2017 at a ceremony commemorating the Baptism of Jesus at the Sistine Chapel in which twenty-eight infants were to be baptized, Pope Francis reiterated support for mothers to breastfeed their children in public, even in sacred places.” ~ Wikipedia
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