Pope Francis: A Life of Service that Reinvigorated the Forgotten

Born on 17 December 1936, the future 88 year-old Jorge Mario Bergoglio would call the Flores barrio of Buenos Aires, Argentina home. 

On the festival of Spring Day, a teenage Jorge would be inspired by a priest at the local San Jose de Flores Basilica, leading him to go to Confession. There, he experienced a revelation to become a priest. 

He thus would enter the archdiocesan seminary of Inmaculada Concepción Seminary in the barrio of Villa Devoto. 

After three years of study, Jorge Bergoglio would join the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) as a novice on 11 March 1958.

His beginning Jesuit studies took him to the capital of Chile in the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile to study humanities.

1960 was a foundational year for the 25 year-old Argentinian Catholic. On 12 March, he would officially become a Jesuit, making the religious profession of the initial, perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. 

He also received his licentiate in philosophy from the Colegio Máximo de San José in San Miguel, Province of Buenos Aires, which allowed our deceased Holy Father to become a teacher. 

During these early years, he would teach literature and psychology in the capital city of the Santa Fe Province (Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz) at Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción from 1964-1965, and then became a teacher back in Buenos Aires at the Jesuit-founded Colegio del Salvador.

Jorge Beroglio returned to his personal studies in San Miguel at the Facultades de Filosofía y Teología de San Miguel in 1967 to earn his licentiate in theology, accomplishing this feat in 1970.

During this time, Jorge Beroglio would be ordained a priest on 13 December 1969 by Archbishop of Córdoba, Ramón José Castellano. 

He would return to the Facultades de Filosofía y Teología de San Miguel as the master of novices from 1972-1973.

Needing to complete his final round of studies, he would travel to Spain to learn in the Community of Madrid's Alcalá de Henares, a city renowned for UNESCO Heritage sites. 

It was here that the future Pope Francis completed his fourth vow of obedience to the pope in missioning on 22 April 1973, and would be sent back to Argentina as the Provincial Superior of the Jesuits there. 

This marked the start of Jorge Bergoglio's leadership during his 6-year term. In 1980, he went off to Ireland to learn English at the former Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy in Ranelagh, Dublin, returning later that year to San Miguel to become the rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty at his alma mater. 

After six years in this role, he would once again go back to studies, but this time in Germany. Jorge Bergoglio would study at the Jesuit institution of Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse. 

Following this brief time in Germany, Jorge Bergoglio became a confessor and spiritual director in the Archdiocese of Córdoba in Argentina. 

The time back in Córdoba allowed our future deceased pope to learn Eastern Rite Catholicism under the patronage of Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest and missionary in Argentina, Stefan Czmil, while a student at the local Salesian School. 

Thus, by the time of 1992, Jorge Bergoglio had become experienced in the Spanish, English, German, and Ukrainian liturgies of the Catholic Church, as well as in Italian, the language of his immigrant parents who fled the rule of Benito Mussolini in 1932. 

At a certain point, the leaders in the Catholic Church of Argentina realized the immense talent they had in their hands as Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, would consecrate Jorge Bergoglio as an auxiliary bishop on 27 June 1992, becoming titular bishop of Auca. 

He became the coadjutor bishop of Buenos Aires on 3 June 1997, and would assume the role of Archbishop of Buenos Aires on 28 February 1998.

As archbishop, future Pope Francis dedicated his ministry to serving the shanty towns, doubling the number of priests who served in the slums of Buenos Aires, often visiting them himself.

It was this care for the less fortunate that signaled to Argentinian Catholics that Jorge Bergoglio was a one of a kind force of humanitarianism, a characteristic the world would come to recognize him with as well. 

Additionally, future Pope Francis would dedicate himself to the "periphery", serving also as the Ordinary of Eastern Rite Catholics in Argentina on 6 November 1998 so the Eastern Catholics could have a bishop leader. 

He led many reconciliation efforts with victims and perpetrators of the various crimes that happened under different administrations of Argentina, especially the dictatorships of the 1970s, some of which were notorious for their death squads of extrajudicial killings.

Jorge Bergoglio was created a cardinal on 21 February 2001 by Pope Saint John Paul II, becoming the titular cardinal-priest of the Roman parish Church of Saint Robert Bellarmine.

In 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio became the President of the Argentina Episcopal Conference, and served two three-year terms. He led further reconciliation efforts with the Argentine people as the effective leader of the Catholic Church in Argentina.

On the world stage in the Roman Curia, Cardinal Bergoglio would serve as a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Congregation for the Clergy, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the Pontifical Council for the Family, and the Commission for Latin America, and additionally served as the recorder in the Synod of Bishops for a period of time.

Having impressed cardinals as a man open to dialogue, future Pope Francis became a key contender for the throne of Saint Peter, a man many Vaticanologist considered a future pope.

2005 saw the election of Pope Benedict XVI, but this never ruled out a future Jorge Bergoglio as pope. 

And, following Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, Cardinal Bergoglio would be elected pope on 13 March 2013 after the second day of voting and fifth ballot.

For the first time, we had a Jesuit pope, a pope from the Americas, a pope from in the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope raised outside of Europe since the 8th Century. 

According to attendees, there were supernatural signs indicating that the Holy Spirit sought Cardinal Bergoglio as pope.

And from a resume perspective, he was truly second to none. 

The man entered the papacy as an expert in the Church on its two most important continents on a per-capita basis (South America and Europe), with abilities across at least eleven languages (Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, English, French, Portuguese, Piedmontese, Genoese Lingurian, and very little Ukrainian), and a hereditary lineage stemming from the Italian Peninsula, thus marking a dynamic figure with a touch of tradition, perfect for a Church needing a spark while retaining its teachings.

Right away, he dedicated his pontificate to the care of the poor and the periphery under the name Francis after Saint Francis of Assissi. 

Similar to Jesus Christ, Pope Francis often rejected pompous circumstances in favor of more humble surroundings as he promised to in his vows as a Jesuit.

On his first Holy Thursday as pope, Pope Francis would wash the feet of twelve juveniles in prison, washing the feet of ten men and for the first time, two women. One man and one woman were Muslim, which symbolized the changing social structure of the Church, one which sought closer relations with Islam.

This is what led Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Ansar, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, to meet in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2019 at the behest of then Emir of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to sign the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together (Abu Dhabi Declaration), which agreed to mutual understandings and a seeking of peace across the world.

This re-integration with the Muslim-world saw Catholics rise to prominence in the UAE where under Pope Francis, the world's largest parish became Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Dubai. 

A further highlight of a more peaceful world coincided with the famous Abraham Accords which saw Israel and the Jewish people and faith gain greater acceptance in the Arab and Muslim worlds and the creation of the Abrahamic Family House, a complex in Abu Dhabi that features a mosque, a church, and a synagogue. The Church was originally reserved for only the Catholic Faith, but Pope Francis made sure that other denominations would be allowed to worship there as well.

This ecumenism was not unusual for Pope Francis, rather it became the norm as Pope Francis re-engaged many various Christian denominations.

For example, during the week of 10 May 2023, Pope Francis allowed the leader of the Oriental Orthodox Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, to speak in front of Saint Peter's Basilica and to lead a mass at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. He further canonized the largely Coptic Orthodox martyrs who were executed in Libya by ISIS, despite most again not being members of the Catholic Church. 

Another important point in his pontificate for ecumenism was his role solidifying closer relations with the Anglican Communion. 

An interesting tradition began under Pope Francis in large part thanks to the former Ambassador of Australia to the Holy See, John Anthony McCarthy, who helped the Vatican create a cricket team: St. Peter's Cricket Club. 

As the effective national cricket team of the Vatican City and thus the Catholic Church's cricket team, the club would play consistently against a representative team of the Anglican Communion and Commonwealth realm, such as the Commonwealth of Nations' XI, the Royal Household Cricket Club, and the King's XI in 2024. 

The goal of the club has been to open the Church to South Asia, the Caribbean, and the Anglosphere where cricket is quite popular. 

Furthermore, under Pope Francis, the Vatican City expanded its national team sports program and began their assent to future IOC membership to one day compete in the Olympics.

While Vatican City national teams had existed in the past, they often only played in friendly matches such as the national soccer team, and were never part of the international federations that put on world championships or were partnered with the IOC.

That all changed under Pope Francis when the Vatican Athletics was established in 2019 with the expressed goal of attaining Olympic recognition. 

The Vatican City would slowly begin this process by competing as guest or observor members of the Mediterranean Games and the Championships of the Small States of Europe in 2022, plus the Games for the Small States of Europe.

Naturally, the discipline Vatican City has excelled in best is long-distance running or cross-country, an event Vatican citizens literally are able to do. Here, Sara Carnicelli became the first medalist in an event for the Vatican City, unofficially attaining third place at the 2022 Championships of the Small States of Europe in the women's 5,000 meters. Giuseppe Zaparatta also attained 3rd place unofficially in the 2024 edition for the 110 meters hurdles. 

But, in order for the Vatican City to compete in the Olympics, it had to first attain official and full membership in the international federations of five sports in the Olympic Games. Under Pope Francis, the Vatican City has attained two, cycling in the Union Cycliste Internationale in 2021, and taekwondo in World Taekwondo in 2021. The small city-state also became a member of the International Padel Federation in 2022.

It was cycling that has attained greatest prominence during this era as Rien Schuurhuis became the first Vatican athlete to compete at a World Championship, having done so at the UCI Road World Championship in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

The importance of these events have helped re-imagine the Catholic Church's privilege of having the Vatican City, the only religion to have its own country. Instead of simply using this historic city-state as a grounds for safe haven, Pope Francis transformed the Vatican City into a full-fledged member of the international community through the use of sports to give more legitimacy at a time when the Church's religious freedom is under attack at alarming rates.

In order to combat these attacks on religious freedom and improve Catholic's lives worldwide, Pope Francis has engaged with the periphery, the places where popes usually do not go to or usually do not include.

A place where sport and Church intermixed in this regard was in the Korean Peninsula where Pope Francis used taekwondo to establish greater relations with both South Korea and North Korea. As a reward for its ever growing Catholic population, Pope Francis announced that South Korea would be the host of the World Youth Day in 2027, the event where millions of Catholic Youth from each country in the world come together to show their Faith in Christ. 

Most notably have been his historic visits, especially his Apostolic Journey to Iraq!

Here, he journeyed to the cities of Ur, Baghdad, Najaf, Qaraqosh, Erbil, and Mosul.

The most iconic moment took place in the Hosh al-Beiaa Square in Mosul where the ruins of Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Chaldean Catholic churches stood, and in the exact location ISIS had promised to kill him years earlier, Pope Francis led a mass there.

All of his security had told him not to visit Iraq as it would be too dangerous, but Pope Francis disagreed and went. It later came out that while in Iraq, his team and he thwarted many potential attacks. He stayed in the country anyway.

Another important journey happened in his historic trip to East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia.

His journey to Papua New Guinea was notable for his outer-region visits as the country is widely known for inter-tribal warfare and thus was a key place for Pope Francis to deliver his message of peace.

Pope Francis often used these trips to formulate foreign policy in attempts of delivering peace and attaining more rights for his Catholic faithful through the culture of encounter.

A great example of this were his journeys to the Americas.

His first pastoral visit was World Youth Day in Brazil, 2013, where Pope Francis told the over 3 million Catholic youths in Rio de Janeiro to not simply be Christian but to act out their Christianity too.

Later in 2015, Pope Francis made two very important trips: one to South American and one to North America.

Earlier in the year, Pope Francis's journey to the Philippines was the largest Apostolic Journey in history generating attendances of 6 to 7 million people! And his first stop on his South American journey to Ecuador saw a mass with staggering numbers of 1.5 million attendees!

But, it was his trip to Bolivia that sought to increase Catholic rights in a nation pushing closer to indigenous nationalism and socialism, two ideologies often opposed to Catholicism as a mechanism of colonialism and capitalism.

Thus, Pope Francis attended and used his World Meeting of Popular Movements while in Bolivia that sought to connect the Church to the plight to fight income inequality and economic exclusionary effects.

Pope Francis's travels to Cuba and the USA brought him to extreme levels of popularity in both nations as he sought to warm relations between the two nations and made historic strides in this that are still reverberating today.

For example, in Cuba, he called for change and this even got then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Raúl Castro, to admit he may start praying again and return to the Church, as well as soften restrictions.

While the USA was in a far better place for religious liberty, the Church had taken a hit under then US President Barack Obama, especially with religious exemptions.

Therefore, Pope Francis made it a point to become very good friends with President Obama and many leading Democrats to hold onto, reinstate, and strengthen these exemptions.

A great example of his support for the Church was when he met with the Little Sisters of the Poor who were being sued for trying to practice their religious exemptions in regards to not supplying contraception and abortion coverage to their employees at their hospitals. Pope Francis wanted to use his new relationships with President Barack Obama to sway the federal government to keep these exemptions while the State of Pennsylvania fought them. Luckily, Little Sisters of the Poor were successful in the end!

Additionally, Pope Francis led President Obama and First Secretary Raúl Castro to have historic meetings, reopening previous closed diplomatic channels, freeing certain sanctions, and allowing easier travel between the two nations. Some of these accomplishments were done in previous years, but culminated in these trips.

While in Washington, D.C., Pope Francis also made the historic first of canonizing a saint on US soil with Saint Father Junípero Serra on 23 September 2015.

Thus, Pope Francis did his best to balance indigenous rights, uphold the principles of Catholic missions, embrace socialist leaders, while also keeping steadfast with conservatives, that way Catholics in places like Bolivia and Cuba, as well as the USA and Ecuador could stay faithful.

Another important journey Pope Francis made was to the two Catholic-majority border nations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.

Similar to Iraq, everyone around Pope Francis said it was a terribly dangerous idea to visit two nations in the heat of bloody and seemingly endless Civil Wars.

Yet, Pope Francis was not to be stopped and delivered one of his most famous speeches, the "Hands off Africa" speech where he called for companies and individuals in wealthy nations to be more Christ-like and to stop their abuses of African labor in the quest for rare Earth resources. The DRC is the nation most synonymous for these infamous practices going back three centuries now and made popular in Joseph Conrad's famous 1899 novel, Heart of Darkness.

In practicing his culture of standing up for the marginalized, Pope Francis made many visits to the LGBTQ community to show them how Jesus loves them and how a place in the Church always existed for them.

He also stood up for migrants' rights despite many not even being Christian.

Both of these acts made Pope Francis largely unpopular in more conservative circles across Europe and North America, and made him subject to many false reports that he changed doctrine, when in reality he often strengthened doctrine by upholding the principles that we should treat all people as Jesus would, all while teaching, advocating for, and maintaining the traditional Christian lifestyle by make clear in several responses to media personalities that Church doctrine and dogma could not change.

Yet, when change could occur, he welcomed it, bringing in women into positions of power previously never held in the Vatican City and Holy See, ending nobility requirements for certain religious orders like the Sovereign Knights of Malta, encouraging the Zaire Use (colloquially referred to as the Congolese Rite), creating cardinals in places such as Mongolia, remissioning through inculturation, and embracing the Jesuit lifestyle while pope.

Similar to how Jorge Bergoglio became a priest and then pope, his death brought about immense signs of a holy man.

Having conquered extreme bad health for three years, and recovering from intense surgery months prior, Pope Francis decided to ignore recommendations and would participate in Easter celebrations around Saint Peter's Basilica riding in the popemobile around the square.

For many, this represented that Pope Francis had made a full recovery. Yet sadly, this was truly his final public act as Pope Francis would pass on Easter Monday.

Nevertheless, it was this fact that added to the legend of Flores. The fact that his last full-day was one of Easter celebrations, where he got to celebrate his Savior's rise, a person he committed his life to.