Pope Francis Biography

Since 2013, Pope Francis has served as the leader of the Catholic Church and the ruler of the Vatican City State. Since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the ninth century, Francis is the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first from outside Europe. Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as a young man worked as a bouncer and janitor before studying chemistry and working as a technician in a food science laboratory. He was motivated to join the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1958 after recuperating from a serious illness. 

He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1969 and served as the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina from 1973 until 1979. In 1998, he was named Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 2001. During the Argentine riots in December 2001, he headed the Argentine Church. Néstor Kirchner's and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's governments viewed him as a political competitor. Following Pope Benedict XVI's retirement on February 28, 2013, a papal conclave chose Bergoglio as his successor on March 13, 2013. Francis upholds the Church's traditional positions on abortion, clerical celibacy, and women's ordination, although he has begun discussions about the possibility of deaconesses and has made women full members of dicasteries in the Roman Curia.

He believes the Church should be more open and friendly to LGBT people, and he supports the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Francis is a vocal opponent of unfettered capitalism, free-market economics, materialism, and overdevelopment, and he pushes for action on climate change, which has become a focal point of his pontificate with the proclamation of Laudato Si'.

Let us look at Pope Francis short biography.

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Early Life

Let us learn more about Pope Francis Education and early life. Bergoglio, the son of Italian immigrants, was born in Argentina. He worked temporarily in the food-processing business after graduating from high school to pursue a career as a chemical technologist but felt called to the church. He had a serious case of pneumonia when he was around 21 years old, which necessitated the removal of a portion of his right lung. In 1958, he entered the Jesuit novitiate and later pursued a career in academia, studying humanities in Santiago, Chile, and receiving a licentiate (master's degree) in philosophy in the province of Buenos Aires. 

He taught the subject of literature and also taught psychology in high school after graduation while seeking a degree in theology. He was ordained a priest in 1969, professed his last vows as a Jesuit in 1973, and subsequently served as superior (leader) of Argentina's Jesuit province from 1973 to 1979.

Bergoglio's tenure as Jesuit head in Argentina coincided with Lieut. Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla's military coup in 1976. Between 10,000 and 30,000 individuals were kidnapped, tortured, and executed by the military and police during the country's subsequent Dirty War, a campaign by the country's military government against communists and other suspected subversives. Later, Bergoglio claimed to have protected many people from the police, even aiding some of them in escaping the country. Two Jesuit priests who worked in poor regions went missing in 1976; five months later, they were found alive but drugged in a field. Bergoglio's role in the priests' kidnapping and release sparked condemnation years after the Dirty War. Some chastised Bergoglio for failing to safeguard the priests, accusing him of handing them over to the government. Others believed Bergoglio when he said he secretly intervened with the dictatorship to gain their freedom.

Bergoglio was found not guilty of participation in the disappearance of the priests in a case filed against him. Bergoglio studied theology in Germany and worked as a seminary instructor and rector in the 1980s. In 1992, he was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. In 1998, he was designated archbishop of Buenos Aires (a position he maintained until his ascension to the Pope), and in 2001, he was made a cardinal.

Bergoglio earned a reputation for humility during Argentina's economic crisis, which began in the late 1990s and culminated in the rapid depreciation of the country's currency in 2002. He resided in a modest downtown apartment rather than the archbishop's house, and he preferred to commute by public transit or on foot rather than in a hired vehicle. In encounters with government officials, he became an ardent champion for the underprivileged and an astute politician, skilfully pushing the church's viewpoint on social issues. 

His religious conservatism, on the other hand, put him in conflict with President Néstor Kirchner's (2003–07) and his wife and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's (2007–15) centre-left governments. Bergoglio was a strong opponent of Fernández's social policies, notably the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2010. Bergoglio, on the other hand, was painted by Fernández as a right-wing fanatic and admirer of the Videla dictatorship.

Jesuit

While on his way to celebrate Spring Day, Bergoglio discovered his vocation to the priesthood. He was inspired by the priest as he went by a church on his way to confession. Bergoglio studied for three years at the Inmaculada Concepción Seminary, an archdiocesan seminary in Villa Devoto, Buenos Aires, before joining the Society of Jesus as a novice on March 11, 1958. Bergoglio has admitted to having an infatuation with a girl he met as a young seminarian and having second thoughts about completing his religious profession. As a Jesuit novice, he had studied humanities in the city of Santiago, Chile.

Bergoglio, after completing his novitiate in the Society of Jesus, became a Jesuit on March 12, 1960. He made the religious confession of the first, permanent vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience of a member of the order. Bergoglio received his licentiate in philosophy from the Colegio Máximo de San José in San Miguel, Buenos Aires Province, in 1960. He taught literature and psychology in the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción in Santa Fe from 1964 to 1965. In 1966, he taught the same classes in Buenos Aires' Colegio del Salvador. 

Presbyterate

Bergoglio began his theological studies at the Facultades de Filosofa y Teologa de San Miguel in 1967, and Archbishop Ramón José Castellano consecrated him to the priesthood on December 13, 1969. He became a professor of theology after serving as the province's master of novices. Bergoglio finished his final stage of Jesuit spiritual formation, tertianship, at Alcalá de Henares, Spain, on April 22, 1973, and made final, solemn vows as a Jesuit, including the fourth vow of obedience to the pope's mission. In July of that year, he was elected provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina for a six-year tenure that concluded in 1979. 

He had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1973, shortly after being chosen provincial superior, but his visit was cut short due to the start of the Yom Kippur War. In 1980, he was chosen rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel, where he had studied, when his tenure of office ended. He spent the first three months of 1980 in Ireland, learning English at the Jesuit Centre at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy in Dublin, before taking up this new position.

He was at San Miguel for six years until 1986, when he was replaced by someone more in tune with the Society of Jesus' worldwide trend toward emphasizing social justice, rather than his emphasis on popular religiosity and direct pastoral work, at the discretion of Jesuit superior-general Peter Hans Kolvenbach. He spent many months in Frankfurt, Germany, at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology, pondering prospective dissertation subjects. He decided to look into the work of Romano Guardini, a German/Italian theologian best known for his study of 'Contrast' in his 1925 book Der Gegensatz. However, he was scheduled to return to Argentina early to serve as a confessor and spiritual director for the Córdoba Jesuit community. He spotted the picture Mary, Untier of Knots in Augsburg while in Germany and took a copy to Argentina, where it has become a popular Marian devotion.

Papacy

Pope Benedict XVI resigned in February 2013, citing worries about his age and health. Early in March, a conclave was called, raising expectations that Benedict's successor may be elected and installed before the Easter break. Bergoglio was elected on the fifth ballot, and he selected the name Francis in honour of St. Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226), who lived a life of humble service to the poor, and St. Francis Xavier (1506–52), a Jesuit founder.

Despite becoming the first Pope Francis and being known as "Francis I," he refused to use the Roman number I to signify that he was the first to use his papal name. (Traditionally, the numeral I is not added to a pope's name until after the election of a second pope with the same name.) During his pontificate, John Paul I [1978] was the first pope to utilize the number.) He also went out to his political foes, inviting Fernández to his first formal papal address. However, by wearing a modest tunic rather than the more customary papal vestments on that day, Francis enraged some traditionalists. Later in 2013, he took the extraordinary step of forming an eight-cardinal council to assist him on church policy. There is also a book on Pope Francis biography book titled “Pope Francis: Life and Revolution: A Biography of Jorge Bergoglio ”.