Pope Francis Profile: Who Is Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio?
By Damien McElroy, and Donna Bowater
At the outset of the conclave, few Vatican watchers were even ranking Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergogio as the top Argentine candidate. The 76-year old had been overshadowed by his fellow countryman Leonardo Sandri, 69, a Vatican diplomat. But having trailed second in every ballot to Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires triumphed at the fifth ballot to chose his successor, becoming the first ever Jesuit to ascend to the throne of St Peter as well as the first from outside Europe. Pope Francis has been a cardinal since 2001 and has won admirers for his humble style of life. "His own simplicity of life, I think will be a great example to people," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the former archbishop of Westminister. "For many people this may be a surprise election but for me it is inspired and I am very very happy, not only for the Catholic Church, but for the world." The son of a railway worker, the new Pope is a trained chemist. He has reportedly become less active in recent years due to his age and the effects of having a lung removed when he suffered an infection as a teenager. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he has spurned the trappings of the church, living in his own apartment. The prelate has even been known to cook his own meals. "In favour of Bergoglio is his pastoral attitude, as they say in the Church – his relationship with the people," said Leandro Pastor, a friend of the new Pope for a quarter of a century who is philosophy professor at the University of Buenos Aires. "He's a very simple man. He's very austere. And also, I think he's an intelligent man and someone who is very good at communicating." But he has also campaigned strongly against the progressive social agenda of the Argentine government. Like John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, he regards the Roman Catholic Church's core values as under attack from secular society. Monsignor Osvaldo Musto, who was at seminary with him, said the archbishop would also be a good choice in terms of continuity. "He's as uncompromising as Pope John Paul II, in terms of the principles of the Church – everything it has defended regarding euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion, the right to life, human rights, celibacy of priests. All of this will continue if Bergoglio is made Pope." When Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2010, Cardinal Bergoglio waged a high-profile campaign against the policy. The move was denounced from the pulpits as dealing a serious injury to the family. The prospect that same-sex couples could adopt would deprive children "of the human growth that God wanted them given by a father and a mother." He said: "Here again is the envy of the devil, by which sin entered into the world, that cunningly seeks to destroy the image of God: man and woman who are mandated to grow, multiply and dominate land." But the cardinal's influence stopped at the presidential palace door after Nestor Kirchner and then his wife, Cristina Kirchner, took over the Argentina's government. Sources close to Bergoglio reportedly said: "The relationship with Kirchner is not bad: it is awful." Father Guillermo Marco, who saw Bergoglio become a cardinal, described his generosity, citing an example of a homeless Bolivian family, who wrote to him about their situation, to which he responded by giving them the money in his wallet to put them up in a house. He failed to prevent the Argentine Supreme Court from expanding access to legal abortions in rape cases, and when Bergoglio argued that gay adoptions discriminate against children, Mrs Kirchner compared his tone to "medieval times and the Inquisition." Taking the reins of a church reeling from multiple failures to address scandals from banking to child abuse, Pope Francis brings his own baggage having been accused of not standing up to abuses of Argentina's military junta. Allegations surrounding his refusal to speak up for priests rounded up during Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship have been described by his supporters as an "old slander". More broadly, critics have also condemned his record of refusing to speak out during the brutal crackdown when some 13,000 to 30,000 people died or disappeared. Anger over the Church's refusal to confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements" in society has diminished but not been vanquished during his time as cardinal. More than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but fewer than 10 per cent regularly attend mass. Under Bergoglio's leadership, Argentina's bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church's failures to protect its followers. But the statement blamed the era's violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies. His biographer Sergio Rubin, author of The Jesuit, said much of the criticism is misplaced but Pope Francis had let many of the charges go uncontested until the image stuck. "Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticised the leftist guerrillas; he doesn't forget that side," he said. After taking a master's degree in chemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, he enrolled at the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto as a seminarian. He later took a liberal arts degree in Santiago before studying philosophy at Catholic University of Buenos Aires. He was ordained a priest in 1969, spending the next two decades teaching in Jesuit schools and universities. He was installed as the new archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. The Jesuits have often been seen as an alternative power base to the papacy in the Catholic Church. With the election of the first Jesuit as pope, these two bases have been united for the first time in history. Away from politics, he instructed priests to remain open and inclusive to groups that have suffered discrimination. "In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptise the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage," Cardinal Bergoglio told worshippers last year. "These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptised!"
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