Franciscus Jorge Mario Bergoglio
Pope Francis became the 266th pope on March 13, 2013, making him the first pope from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936, he worked as a chemical technician and a bouncer before joining the Jesuits. He died on April 21, 2025 in Vatican City from a cerebral stroke.
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Pope Francis — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
At age 17, a life-threatening bout with pneumonia and the removal of part of one lung pushed Jorge Mario Bergoglio toward the priesthood. The oldest of five children born to Mario José Bergoglio and Regina María Sívori on December 17, 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he worked as a chemical technician at the Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory and even as a bouncer at a night club before entering the seminary.
Pope Francis joined the Jesuits and studied at the Inmaculada Concepción Seminary, the Colegio Máximo de San José, and the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Germany. He became an auxiliary bishop in 1992 and Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998. After Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, the cardinals elected Bergoglio pope on March 13, 2013. He took the name Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. As pope, he was a vocal critic of capitalism, advocated for wealth redistribution, and pushed for environmental measures to combat climate change. He used the word genocide to describe the Armenian massacre and spoke strongly against the death penalty.
Pope Francis never married and had no children, as required for Catholic clergy. He lived simply in the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse rather than the papal apartments. A polyglot, he spoke Spanish, Italian, English, German, French, Ukrainian, and Latin. He had two siblings: María Elena Bergoglio and Óscar Adrián Bergoglio Sívori. In 2024, he met with Argentine President Javier Milei in a private audience, exchanging gifts including dulce de leche and lemon biscuits.
Pope Francis became the first pope from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, and the first non-European pope since Pope Gregory III in 741. He was named Time Person of the Year in 2013 and appeared on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list in 2014. His papacy addressed climate change, poverty, and social justice. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and numerous other honors. He used his platform to speak out against the death penalty and to use the word genocide to describe the Armenian massacre.
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We Are All Sinners, but We Are All Not Corrupt.
Unrestrained Liberalism Only Makes the Strong Stronger and the Weak Weaker and Excludes the Most Excluded.
Politics Is the Most Important of Civil Activities and Has Its Own Field of Action, Which Is Not That of Religion.
Everyone Has His Own Idea of Good and Evil and Must Choose to Follow the Good and Fight Evil as He Conceives Them. That Would Be Enough to Make the World a Better Place.
The Lord Has Redeemed All of Us, All of Us, with the Blood of Christ: All of Us, Not Just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the Atheists?’ Even the Atheists. Everyone! and This Blood Makes Us Children of God of the First Class! We Are Created Children in the Likeness of God and the Blood of Christ Has Redeemed Us All! and We All Have a Duty to Do Good. and This Commandment for Everyone to Do Good, I Think, Is a Beautiful Path Towards Peace. If We, Each Doing Our Own Part, Do Good to Others, If We Meet There, Doing Good, and We Go Slowly, Gently, Little by Little, We Will Make That Culture of Encounter That so Much. We Must Meet One Another Doing Good. ‘but I Don’t Believe, Father, I Am an Atheist!’ but Do Good: We Will Meet One Another There.
Before God and His People, I Express My Sorrow for the Sins and Grave Crimes of Clerical Sexual Abuse Committed Against You.
Eight Months Without a Visit from Her Children, That Is a Mortal Sin. Where the Elderly Are Not Honored, There Is No Future for the Young. a Society Where the Elderly Are Discarded Carries Within It the Virus of Death. If We Do Not Learn to Look After and to Respect Our Elderly, We Will Be Treated in the Same Way. the Quality of a Society, I Mean of a Civilization, Is Also Judged by How It Treats Elderly People and by the Place It Gives Them in Community Life.
Dear Armenian Brothers and Sisters, a Century Has Passed Since That Horrific Massacre Which Was a True Martyrdom of Your People, in Which Many Innocent People Died as Confessors and Martyrs for the Name of Christ. Even Today, There Is Not an Armenian Family Untouched by the Loss of Loved Ones Due to That Tragedy: It Truly Was ‘Metz Yeghern’, the ‘Great Evil’, as It Is Known by Armenians…It Is the Responsibility Not Only of the Armenian People and the Universal Church to Recall All That Has Taken Place, but of the Entire Human Family, so That the Warnings from This Tragedy Will Protect Us from Falling into a Similar Horror, Which Offends Against God and Human Dignity.
The Earth…is Beginning to Look Like a Pile of Filth. .
Faced with the Suffering and Need of Our Defenseless Brothers, Some Turn Away or Move On, Whereas Others Stop and Respond with Generous Dedication to Their Cry for Help.You Adherents of the Pro Life Movement, Have Sought, in Forty Years of Activity, to Imitate the Good Samaritan. in Face of Various Forms of Menaces to Human Life, You Have Approached the Fragility of Your Neighbor, and Have Worked so That Those That Live in Precarious Conditions Are Not Excluded and Discarded.
How Can We Respond to Those Who Say That There Is No Need to Go to Mass, Not Even on Sundays, Because What Is Important Is to Live Well, to Love Our Neighbors? It Is True That the Quality of the Christian Life Is Measured by the Capacity to Love, but How Can We Practice the Gospel Without Drawing the Necessary Strength to Do It, One Sunday After Another, from the Inexhaustible Spring of the Eucharist? We Christians Need to Participate in Sunday Mass Because Only with the Grace of Jesus, with His Living Presence in Us and Among Us, Can We Put into Practice His Commandment, and Thus Be His Credible Witnesses.
Christians and Muslims Are Brothers and Sisters, and We Must Act as Such
Our World Today Needs Fathers.
Yes, Dogs and Cats Take the Place of Children. Yes, It’s Funny, I Understand, but It Is the Reality. and This Denial of Fatherhood or Motherhood Diminishes Us, It Takes Away Our Humanity. and in This Way Civilization Becomes Aged and Without Humanity, Because It Loses the Richness of Fatherhood and Motherhood. and Our Homeland Suffers, as It Does Not Have Children.
If We Want the World to Change, Then First Our Hearts Must Change.
Today Children Children Are Taught in School That Everyone Can Choose His or Her Sex. Why Are They Teaching This? Because the Books Are Provided by the People and Institutions That Give You Money. These Forms of Ideological Colonization Are Also Supported by Influential Countries. and This Is Terrible!
Little-known facts about Pope Francis — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
He became the first pope from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, and the first non-European pope since Syrian-born Pope Gregory III in 741.
His public statements include strong opposition to the death penalty.
Time magazine named him Person of the Year for 2013.
He used the word genocide to describe the mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule during World War I.
Time magazine included him in its 100 Most Influential People list in April 2014.
A polyglot, his native language is Spanish; he spoke Italian, Piedmontese, English, German, Portuguese, French, Ukrainian, and Latin.
He publicly advocated for environmental measures to combat climate change.
Elected pope on March 13, 2013 to succeed Pope Benedict XVI who had resigned earlier that year.
In November 2014, the Vatican hosted an interfaith colloquium on the complementarity of man and woman; in his opening remarks, Pope Francis stated that the decline of the culture of marriage is associated with increased poverty and social ills affecting women, children and the elderly.
In 2014, he reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s conservative approach by endorsing the Vatican’s criticism of U.S. nuns who were accused of promoting radical feminist themes and ignoring church teachings on same-sex marriage and abortion.
He excommunicated Father Greg Reynolds of Melbourne, Australia in 2013 for backing women’s ordination and gay marriage.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich penned an homage to him in Time’s 100 Most Influential People issue.
In July 2010, then-Cardinal Bergoglio asked Carmelite nuns to pray against a gay marriage bill, calling it an attempt to destroy God’s plan and a move of the Father of Lies.
During his 2018 visit to Chile, he quoted a few lines from the song Aquí by Chilean rock band La Ley.
He was the first pope since the fifteenth century to succeed an abdicated pontiff since Martin V succeeded Gregory XII in 1417.
He was the first pope to choose an unused regnal name in over a millennium; the previous was Pope Lando who died in 914.
He was a vocal critic of capitalism and spoke in favor of wealth redistribution.
He was the first non-European Pope since Gregory III in 741.
He was the first Pope from either American continent.
He denied rumors of abdication, fearing that two consecutive resignations could threaten the papal throne.
In January 2023, he became the first reigning pope to attend the funeral of a pope emeritus since Pope Boniface VIII attended Pope Emeritus Celestine V’s in 1296.
He called for a global ban on parenting via surrogacy, calling the practice deplorable and a grave violation of dignity.
He met with Argentine President Javier Milei in a private audience in 2024, exchanging gifts including dulce de leche and lemon biscuits.
The Vatican published the declaration Dignitas Infinita in 2024, affirming inherent human dignity and listing assaults such as abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia, and capital punishment.
During his papacy, the Vatican rejected gender fluidity and declared sex change a threat to human dignity.
He worked for several years as a chemical technician in the food section of Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory.
He once worked as a janitor.
He was the oldest of five children.
He used to work as a bouncer at a night club.
At age 21, after life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts, he had part of a lung excised.
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