Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, on December 17, 1936. He was the son of Piedmontese immigrants from Italy: his father, Mario, worked as an accountant on the railway, and his mother, Regina Sivori, took care of the home and the education of their five children.
He graduated as a chemical technician and then chose the path of the priesthood, entering the diocesan seminary of Villa Devoto. On March 11, 1958, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. He completed his humanities studies in Chile, and upon returning to Argentina, he obtained a degree in philosophy in 1963 at the Saint Joseph College in San Miguel. From 1964 to 1965, he taught literature and psychology at the Immaculate Conception College in Santa Fé, and in 1966, he taught the same subjects at the Salvador College in Buenos Aires. From 1967 to 1970, he studied theology, also graduating from Saint Joseph College.
On December 13, 1969, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Ramón José Castellano. From 1970 to 1971, he continued his preparation in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and on April 22, 1973, he made his perpetual profession in the Jesuits. He returned to Argentina, where he was a novice master at Villa Barilari in San Miguel, a professor at the Faculty of Theology, a consultant for the Jesuit province, and also Rector of the college.
On July 31, 1973, he was elected provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina, a position he held for six years. He then returned to university work, and from 1980 to 1986, he was once again Rector of Saint Joseph College and also a parish priest in San Miguel. In March 1986, he went to Germany, where he completed his doctoral thesis; afterward, his superiors sent him to the Salvador College in Buenos Aires and then to the Church of the Society in Córdoba, where he served as spiritual director and confessor.
Cardinal Antonio Quarracino invited him to be his close collaborator in Buenos Aires. Thus, on May 20, 1992, Pope John Paul II appointed him titular bishop of Auca and Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires. On June 27, he received episcopal ordination from the Cardinal in the Cathedral. As his motto, he chose “Miserando atque eligendo” and included the Christogram IHS, the symbol of the Society of Jesus, on his coat of arms.
On June 3, 1997, he was promoted to Archbishop Coadjutor of Buenos Aires. Nine months later, following the death of Cardinal Quarracino, he succeeded him on February 28, 1998. Three years later, at the Consistory of February 21, 2001, Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal. In April 2005, he participated in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio participated in the V CELAM Conference in Aparecida in 2007, where he was the rapporteur of the Aparecida Document. He is the author of the books Meditaciones para religiosos (1982), Reflexiones sobre la vida apostólica (1986), and Reflexiones de esperanza (1992).
Travels and documents
He was elected Successor of Peter on March 13, 2013, after the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, becoming the first Pope born on the American continent and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. He was enthroned on March 19, 2013.
Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis made 47 apostolic trips, in addition to domestic trips within Italy, becoming the Pope with the most travels in history.
He published three encyclicals: the first, Lumen fidei, co-authored with Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, and two of his own: Laudato si’ (2015) and Fratelli Tutti (2020). His apostolic exhortations were also significant: Evangelii gaudium (2013), Amoris laetitia (2016), Gaudete et exsultate (2018), Christus vivit (2019), Querida Amazonia (2020), and Laudate Deum (2023).
(Written with information from Vatican.va)
