Pope Francis in white robes
Image: General Audience with Pope Francis by Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk., taken on: April 17, 2013.

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He loved that city and never desired to leave it. While recovering from surgery in Rome while still a cardinal, he once referred to Buenos Aires as “his spouse.” After his election as pope in 2013, he became the 266th holder of the office of Peter. He is the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit ever elected to this office. He announced his papacy by saying that his brother cardinals had called someone “from the ends of the earth” to serve in this office. 

Pope Francis was born to Italian immigrant parents and grew up in a working-class section of Buenos Aires. The situation of being from immigrant stock was important to his identity, for he knew that Argentina was a nation with a strong identity but only as a nation of immigrants. His defense of immigrants later in life stems from this conviction. As a young man, he studied chemistry and worked briefly as a technician in a food laboratory, but he felt a calling to the priesthood and joined the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1958. He first studied in a diocesan seminary and later transferred to the Jesuits. This initial exposure to diocesan life was influential in his later advocacy for urban ministry, a topic foreign to the Jesuits of that period.

Bergoglio was ordained as a priest on Dec. 13, 1969. His early work as a Jesuit priest focused on pastoral care and education, and he quickly gained a reputation for his intellectual acumen and compassion for the poor. As rector of the seminary, he introduced the Jesuits of San Miguel to the theme of inculturation by hosting an international conference on that theme. He later studied theology and philosophy but failed to earn his doctorate in theology even after spending two years in Germany researching the relationship of faith and culture in Romano Guardini. This topic reappears, however, in his papal writings and encyclicals. 

In 1992, Bergoglio was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires and later became the archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. As archbishop, he was known for his humility and dedication to marginalized people. He also played a role in addressing the country's social issues, particularly poverty and the rights of workers. He was accused of complicity with the authoritarian regime during the “Dirty War” after the incarceration of two fellow Jesuits. In spite of an accusatory biography named The Jesuit, those charges were later found to be fabricated. 

In 2001, Pope John Paul II appointed Bergoglio as a cardinal. In this role, Cardinal Bergoglio became known for his conservative theology but also for his progressive stance on social issues, particularly the plight of the poor and the elderly. 

In early 2013, he made an unusual appearance as archbishop at the Catholic University of Argentina to introduce a new book by Fr. Enrique Bianchi on the urban ministry of Fr. Rafael Tello, Pobres en este mundo, ricos en la fe (Sant 2,5). Tello had been banned from teaching at the seminary by a former archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio began his talk by saying: “Hay chistes en la historia [History is filled with irony].” His words were laudatory with respect to both the extraordinary witness of Tello and the rich scholarship of Bianchi. 

On March 13, 2013, Cardinal Bergoglio was elected the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. He said that he admired St. Francis for his love of the poor and his dedication to the earth as our common home. His election was historic for several reasons: he was the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit pope, and the first pope to take the name Francis.

He was a stark critic of a self-referential Church and preferred to preach apostolic zeal and the model of a Church as a field hospital. He was known for his efforts to reform the Vatican, seeking to address corruption and financial mismanagement within the Church. He has worked to bring attention to the sexual abuse crisis within the Church and has taken steps to address it, including meeting with survivors and implementing new measures for accountability in multiple contexts.

Even in the move to Rome, Pope Francis remained a Latin American priest of great humility and simplicity. He chose not to live in the papal apartments but instead to reside in the Vatican guesthouse. He has been noted for his personal connections with people, his willingness to listen, and his down-to-earth nature. As pope, he confounded the Swiss guards in charge of his security by venturing outside of the Vatican to visit a record shop owned by an elderly couple whom he had befriended as a young priest.

His papacy has not been without controversy, as some of his views on issues like LGBTQ rights, marriage, and gender have generated significant discussion within the Church. However, Pope Francis has consistently called for compassion and understanding, emphasizing the importance of love and respect for all people.

Even in the move to Rome, Pope Francis remained a Latin American priest of great humility and simplicity. He chose not to live in the papal apartments but instead to reside in the Vatican guesthouse. He has been noted for his personal connections with people, his willingness to listen, and his down-to-earth nature. As pope, he confounded the Swiss guards in charge of his security by venturing outside of the Vatican to visit a record shop owned by an elderly couple whom he had befriended as a young priest. 

He was a promoter of Christian unity and interreligious dialogue, a gift that he brought from his experiences in Argentina. This gift was shared with Duke. For example, Duke Divinity Dean Edgardo Colón-Emeric met with Pope Francis in 2017 as part of the Catholic-Methodist International Dialogue (MERCIC) and again in 2022 in his role as chair of MERCIC. Dr. Jung Choi was also part of that encounter as a Methodist representative. 

One distinctive characteristic of this engagement was his renewed efforts to reach out directly to Pentecostal and charismatic movements, something that he already did as archbishop of Buenos Aires. One commentator refers to this effort as the “charismatic ecumenism” of Pope Francis. The nondenominational group John 17 in Phoenix, Ariz., for example, has had numerous direct conversations with the Holy Father and his representatives outside the structure of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. 

Pope Francis has also been a vocal advocate for environmental issues, especially climate change, and he published the encyclical Laudato Si' in 2015, which called for an ecological conversion to promote global action to protect the environment and care for the planet.

His encyclical Fratelli Tutti deals with social friendship and grew out of a concord on world peace signed with the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the Egyptian Islamic scholar Ahmed el-Tayeb. The parable of the Good Samaritan was a key to his vision of fraternity. Christians are called to live this out with their neighbors, especially those neighbors whose lives, faith, and social views differ from their own. 

Through the post-Vatican II tradition of synods of bishops, Francis opened up a path to synodality. Derived from a Greek term whose original meaning is “walking together,” he encouraged the entire leadership of the Church to engage in a process of mutual listening. The fruits of this effort, which included two historic synods on synodality in Rome in 2023 and 2024, are now being explored at the local diocesan and parish level. 

He was a gift to the U.S. Catholic Church, although not all Catholics in the U.S. always welcomed his messages in support of social justice and migrants. For example, he wrote a letter to U.S. bishops in January of 2025 saying: "The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness." He continued: "This is not a minor issue. An authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized." He also rebuked Vice President J.D. Vance, who is a Catholic, for misrepresenting the ordo amoris (“order of love”) in St. Augustine in terms of expanding concentric circles of diminishing self-interest. However, the two met the day before the pope’s death and exchanged Easter greetings. Pope Francis also gave Easter treats to Vance’s children, so there was a reconciliation of sorts on the pope’s last day of life.

As Pope Francis aged, his health has occasionally been a subject of attention, particularly after he underwent surgery to remove part of his colon in 2021. He died at 7:35 a.m. Rome time on Easter Monday, April 21 while recovering from a lengthy hospitalization in February and March due to double pneumonia and related respiratory issues. During his days in the hospital, he made a regular phone call to a Catholic pastor in Gaza, who is also from Argentina, to inquire about the well-being of the Christians in this war-torn region. 

Pope Francis gave new instructions for his funeral in keeping with his mendicant simplicity. Past popes were entombed in three coffins: one made out of cypress, one of zinc and one of elm, nested inside each other, but Francis has ordered that he be buried in a single coffin, made of wood and zinc. Like St. Francis, he lived to the very end a simple, humble Christian life dedicated to the rebuilding of the Church. 

Bergoglio brought riches from his religious order and his Latin American pastoral engagement to the office of the papacy. The pope is pontifex, literally, a builder of bridges in the city of Rome and throughout the world, and this pope was nothing if not pontifical in this sense. Francis’s papacy brings together the Ignatian tradition of “contemplation in action” with the Franciscan devotion to seeking a durable peace that penetrates everyday life of all people, rich and poor, through a cosmic vision of finding traces of Triune love in all things. Today we pray that the first Holy Father from the Americas, el porteño Jorge Mario Bergoglio, returns to the house of the Father and rests eternally in that peace of the Lord. 

Image credit information: General Audience with Pope Francis, by Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk., taken on April 17, 2013.