Born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five Italian immigrants.
He believed he taught him how to pray for his devout grandmother Rosa. On the weekend I listened to operas on the radio, went to Mass, and attended matches at the family’s beloved San Lorenzo soccer club. As Pope, his love for football brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors.
He received a religious call at the age of 17 during his confession, and in his 2010 biographer, “I don’t know what it is, but it changed my life…I realized they were waiting for me.”
He entered the parish seminary, but in 1958 he switched to Jesuit order and was attracted to its missionary tradition and extremists.
Around this time he suffered from pneumonia, which removed the upper part of his right lung. His frail health prevented him from becoming a missionary, and his stubborn lung ability was probably responsible for his voice and his whispers reluctant to sing in Mass.
On December 13, 1969, he was appointed priest and soon began teaching. In 1973 he was appointed head of the Jesuits of Argentina. The appointment, which he later admitted to being “crazy” because he was 36, “had my authoritarian and swift decision, seriously troubled and super conservative,” he admitted in an interview with Civilta Cattolica.
His six-year tenure as a state coincided with Argentina’s dictatorship of 1976-83 when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regimes.
Bergoglio was accused of not openly confronting the junta and effectively allowing the two slum priests to be lured and tortured for not publicly supporting their work.
For decades he refused to counter that version of the event. Only in a certified biographer in 2010 he ultimately recounted the behind-the-scenes lengths he used to save them, persuading the priests of the family of feared dictator Jorge Videra to call the illness. Once he reached Junta’s leader’s house, Belgolio personally pleaded for mercy. Both priests were eventually released.
As Pope, many people (priests, seminaries, political dissidents) that Belgolian actually saved during the “dirty war” began to appear, allowing them to maintain secrets in seminary and flee the country.
Bergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research papers that never ended. Back in Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during what is described as an era of “a great internal crisis.” Unfavoured by more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually saved from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later and in 2001 he became a cardinal.
He approached the Pope when Benedict was elected in 2005, and bowed after winning the second vote in several votes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
