Biography of Francisco:- Current pope of the Catholic Church who began his pontificate in March 2013, after being elected in a conclave after the unexpected resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio took after his election the name of Francisco, never adopted by any previous pontiff, and was immediately called by the media Francisco I; the Vatican had to clarify that its official name is Francisco, without the ordinal.
In the figure of Pope Francis, two unprecedented events have taken place in the history of the Catholic Church: his membership in the Society of Jesus (a Jesuit had never been elevated to the throne of Peter) and his Hispano-American origin, after twenty-one centuries of pontiffs originating in Europe or the Middle East.
Biography of Francisco Pizarro
- Born:- Trujillo, Cáceres, Spain
- Nationalty:- Spanish
- Assassinated:- 26 June 1541, Lima, Peru
- Spouse:- Quispe Sisa (m. ?–1536)
- Years Of Service:- 1496–1541
- Sibblings:- Gonzalo Pizarro, Hernando Pizarro, Juan Pizarro,
Born in a modest family of Italian emigrants, his parents Mario Bergoglio, an employee of the railways, and Regina, housewife.
See Also: Biography of the Prophet Muhammad
After graduating as a chemical technician, at age 21 he felt the call of religious vocation and entered the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto (City of Buenos Aires), from which he would graduate priest on December 13, 1969.
During the years prior to ordination he had been a teacher in schools that the Society of Jesus had in Santa Fe and Buenos Aires; by that time he came to lose a lung due to respiratory disease.
His brilliant presbyterial trajectory, circumscribed to the Society of Jesus, made him an Argentine provincial of the same (1973-1979), in times of harsh and violent times, those of the military dictatorship, in which he had to redirect the pastoral mission of the religious order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
On May 20, 1992, he was consecrated titular bishop of Auca, a position that made him one of the four auxiliary prelates of Buenos Aires. He was later appointed coadjutor bishop of this archdiocese (June 3, 1997), and led him as archbishop on February 28, 1998.
He began an intense pastoral work based on two complementary lines: preaching between the popular classes and the denunciation of economic and social injustices. He accompanied this work with examples of morigeration in their occupations and customs.
Criticism of administrative corruption, first, and later his strong opposition to the legalization of homosexual marriage, clouded personal and institutional relations with Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and his wife and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Pope John Paul II appointed him a cardinal with the title of St. Robert Belarmino (February 21, 2001), a magistracy that combined with the rank of primacy of Argentina, the highest authority of Catholicism in his country.
He was also president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference and the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM).
In the conclave celebrated after the death of John Paul II (2005), the Buenos Aires archbishop obtained 40 papal vows, but the election opted for the German Joseph Ratzinger, who assumed the papacy as Benedict XVI.
Apparently during the first two ballots, Bergoglio almost asked with tears in his eyes the rest of his brother cardinals to stop voting, for he did not see himself with the strength to assume the fate of the supreme pontiff.
The Election and the Pontificate
Eight years later, the resignation of Benedict XVI (February 28, 2013) was the event that made possible the ascension of the Argentine cardinal to Pedro, for which he was elected on March 13 of the same year.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Latin American pontiff and the first Jesuit Holy Father in the history of the Church, as well as in the first of his popes that took the name of Francis, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi.
The choice of that name fits with the character of the new pontiff, whose modesty and humility were already evident in his time as archbishop and cardinal, in which he resigned his official car and his palace residence to live in a small apartment where he himself prepared their meals.
On March 19, in his homily at the opening Mass of the pontificate, Pope Francis assured that it was the duty of Peter’s successors “to set their eyes on the humble service” and “to open their arms to guard all the people of God and welcome with tenderness and affection all h umanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the smallest, “words that opened expectations of renewal in the action of the Church.
It was not expected, however, that such a renewal would reach doctrinal questions, on which the new pope had always been conservative.
Obviously, a year is a short time inside a pontificate, and a period totally insufficient to visualize changes in an ancient institution; despite this, it can be said that, by March 2014, numerous signs had been sent pointing to a renewing intention.
The humble and close style of the new pontiff became the norm: Francis renounced living in the episcopal palace and instead preferred the house Santa Marta in the Vatican.
And in his numerous statements, Pope Francis not only reaffirmed his commitment to the poor, peace and social justice, but showed an unprecedented degree of tolerance towards homosexuality and opened the door to the revision of ecclesiastical celibacy.
More profound results are to be expected from the relatively quiet ecclesiastical reform undertaken by Pope Francis.
The removal of Cardinal Tarsicio Bertone as secretary of state of the Vatican and the appointment to that position of the archbishop Pietro Parolin was the next step to the creation of a Council of Cardinals to which he entrusted diverse projects of reform of the curia; as an independent body made up of members of his or her trust, there could be real proposals for renewal.
This process has evidenced the value and intelligence of Pope Francis, who in this way has avoided from the outset being stranded in the complex Vatican machinery.
