From Buenos Aires to Rome, François, a pope for history

Rome, March 13, 2013, 8:05 p.m. The 266th pope appeared at the loggia of the Saint-Pierre basilica. “Brothers and sisters, good evening!” “The round silhouette, still surprised by the conclave ballot which brings him to the head of the Catholic church, nevertheless smiling and very present, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio already sets the tone of his pontificate:” It seems that my Cardinals brothers went to seek the new bishop of Rome almost at the end of the world … But we are there! »»

Leaving aside the clothes of purple and gold, it is in the simplicity of the white cassock that it advances, the look moved behind glasses with thick glasses. He bowed, first invites the crowd to pray for him: “Before the bishop blessed the people, I ask you to pray to the Lord so that he blessed me. Let us make this prayer in silence, of all of you on me. »»

Strong gestures, shock formulas

From the first minute, Pope Francis imposes his style. He will disturb, he is not elected to please. The financial powers, the old continent, the prelates of the curia, the sleeping Catholics … Throughout his pontificate, he tackled the ailments of the century, poverty, slavery, violence … So many fights waged with gentle and firmness, with constant attention to the little ones.

The pope wants to be a comforter, close, humble, and he succeeds. From his daily life to the Vatican to his travels, he multiplies strong gestures, shock formulas. As if there had been an urgency to leave its mark. The Argentinian pope has no other concern than the Gospel. A vocation to the deep roots.

An Argentinian childhood

He came from afar, the new pope. Even if becoming bishop of Rome is a bit of a return to the origins for this son of an Italian immigrant who arrived in Argentina in 1929 in the hope of living better than in the ancestral Piedmont. The eldest of a family of five, Jorge Mario was born on December 17, 1936 in Buenos Aires, his city. From his father Mario Josè Bergoglio, accountant in the railway company, he acquired the sense of work: from the age of 13, the young college student, passionate about football and supporter of the San-Lorenzo club, must also ensure odd jobs.

A few years later, he worked in a laboratory while pursuing studies as a chemical engineer. A busy youth, happy with family and with friends. But on September 21, 1953, “student day”, he forgot to join his comrades, upset by a call: passing in front of the San-José-de-Flores church, his parish, the young Jorge decides to confess. During the meeting with the priest, he discovers that he is made for the priesthood: “It was the surprise, the amazement of a meeting; I realized that I was expected. He’s just 17 years old.

An ordination in 1969

The future pope does not immediately enter the seminar. He continues his studies, and crosses the disease: at 21, he narrowly escapes death, struck by a pulmonary infection which leads to the removal of part of the right lung.

In 1958, after a short passage to the diocesan seminar of Villa Devoto, he engaged in the company of Jesus, with the ardent desire to become a missionary in Japan … which his fragile health does not allow him. While teaching literature and psychology, he follows the long Jesuit formation in Chile, Spain and Argentina.

Ordained a priest in 1969 in Buenos Aires, he became, the following year, master of novices, then he was elected provincial three years later. While the country crosses difficult times, soon bloody by the military dictatorship of General Videla (1976-1983), the company is torn by serious tensions caused by the theology of the Liberation.

Father Bergoglio manages, not without difficulty, to maintain its unity. The Jesuit official, who refuses to politicize pastoral action, must both maintain the preferential option for the poor without encouraging his priests tempted by militant Marxism. Thirty years later, some people question the attitude of the young provincial who, at 37, intervened on several occasions to release sequestered priests, as will later confirm the Nobel Peace Nobel Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

A bishop for the poor

At the end of his provincial mandate, Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio became a professor of theology and rector of Collegio Máximo, of Buenos Aires, in 1980. Completing his thesis in Germany in 1986, he became, a year later, parish priest of Cordoba, 700 km west of his hometown.

In 1992, the classic career of this pastoral Jesuit took on a new dimension when he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires by Pope John Paul II. Few Jesuits have access to episcopal loads, an honor contrary to the wishes of Saint Ignatius. Coadjutor in 1997, he succeeded Cardinal Quarracino the following year: Primate of Argentina, Mgr Bergoglio was at the head of the important diocese of Buenos Aires of more than three million souls.

John Paul II created the Cardinal in 2001

This consecration does not divert the new archbishop from his radical choice for evangelical simplicity. Abandoning the sumptuous episcopal residence, he lives in a small apartment, cooks, uses public transport: “My people are poor, and I am one of their own,” he explains.

Reader from Dostoyevski and Borges, he leads an ascetic life, rises around 4:30 a.m., but gladly granted a few moments of relaxation by listening to tango, an opera or by attending a football match. Capable of rising against power, especially during the serious economic crisis that Argentina is going through in 2001 or even during the advent of the populist and authoritarian government of the Kirchner spouses, the archbishop spends a lot of time visiting the poor in the Miserias villas, the Argentine favelas.

When John Paul II created the Cardinal in 2001, Mgr Bergoglio enjoined his faithful not to go to Rome for the ceremony but to use the money saved to help the needy. Close to his priests, they can reach him by phone on a direct line. What strikes the faithful is his attentive presence: “He listens twice as much as he speaks and perceives much more than what he listens”, already confided a relative on a daily basis The crossin 2005. A rule that the Argentinian Pope will apply, especially during synodal procedures.

A confusing pope

How did this bishop in the field become Pope? Combining doctrinal and pastoral rigor of the meeting, Mgr Bergoglio is not only an attentive pastor: on his defending body, he imposed himself, little by little, as the leader of the Latin American episcopate. After refusing the charge for the first time in 2002, he became president of the Argentine episcopal conference from 2005 to 2011, and played an essential role in the work of the Latin American episcopal council (CEM), especially in 2007, to meet Aparecida, Brazil.

During the 2005 conclave, Cardinal Bergoglio is the only real competitor of Cardinal Ratzinger. The secret reigns over the voting of the cardinals, but it is rumored that the Argentinian arch would have in advance decline this heavy mission and allowed, in a way, the rapid election of Benoît XVI.

1st Jesuit at the head of the church

In 2013, Bergoglio obviously accepted this overwhelming charge with serenity. From the first hours, he showed pastoral intuitions that appeal. The 265th successor of Pierre never ceases to surprise. A situation without equivalent in Catholic history, he can visit his predecessor and has expressed, on several occasions, his affection for Benoît XVI.

First Latin American pope, the first Jesuit at the head of the church, he is also resolutely the pope of the poor. Whoever chose to place his pontificate under the high figure of François d’Assise, the Poverello, has long been committed with the poorest, considering poverty as “a violation of human rights”. A commitment that is not only manifested in preaching and speeches.

The pope created the surprise, for his first Holy Thursday at the Vatican, when he washed the prisoners’ feet and a Muslim Muslim girl. Cardinal Bergoglio did the same in his diocese during Holy Week, bowing in front of AIDS patients, prisoners, drug addicts … The first visit to the new pontiff outside Rome will be to pay tribute to the too many migrants who died in the Mediterranean before even reaching the Sicilian island of Lampedusa (Italy): “Who cried for the death of these brothers and sisters? The globalization of indifference has taken away the ability to cry! »»

A off -center church

Very quickly, Pope Francis imposed his style. He surprises, he shakes up the protocol, he has nothing to do with regulatory distances and becomes – during trips to all continents in particular – the permanent anxiety of security services. This Latino pope needs contact with the faithful: he stops Place Saint-Pierre during his weekly audience. He hugs in his arms, smiles and listens to those he knew in Buenos Aires, calls those who write to him … In fact, he is Pope as he was bishop or parish priest.

If he shakes up the Vatican, it is simply by remaining himself; Without changing anything – or almost – of his habits. He keeps his metal pectoral cross and refuses gold; He does not live in pontifical apartments and remains a resident of the Sainte-Marthe house where bishops around the world come across breakfast; He uses an imaginary, accessible, punchy language … which can sometimes make teeth cringe, but touches hearts, far beyond ecclesial borders: “I never want to see sisters and priests with the head of a pepper to vinegar”, he says to the seminarians and young nuns.

Encyclical on the Ecology Laudato if ‘

François has the heavy mission to reform the Curia. By appointing a college of eight cardinals to carry with him this necessary mutation, the pope blows up the locks of the Vatican city; He recalls Mgr Pietro Parolin, nuncio in Venezuela, to be his secretary of state, a young, experienced and diplomat prelate. With the Church of Latin America which represents 48 % of Catholics in the world, Pope Francis knows where he is going. His pontificate, led to a beating drum, shows his determination to “decentralize” the church to go to the “peripheries”.

His little sentences like her big texts – mainly his encyclical on the Ecology Laudato Si ‘ – come to shake up Catholics and more broadly the contemporary world. The message pleases, disturbs, destabilizes, but it will remain in hearts and intelligences as an evangelical roadmap that an unforeseen pope embodied with passion: “As I would like a poor church in the service of the poor!” »»