Postulation over Jorge Mario Bergoglio became a turbulent journey; darkness of personal suffering, church politics, and many sorrowful moments were interspersed along his life path of humility and a cosmopolitan personality we know as Pope.
Born in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Italian immigrants, Bergoglio’s mother was also of Italian ancestry and wished for her son to be a priest. His journey was not free of hurdles: at 21 years, he went through a harrowing experience with pulmonary infection ending in an operation to partially resect the lung, an experience he ever after would believe depended entirely on God for his survival.
By 1958, he was working administratively towards priesthood as a novice in the Society of Jesus, the major interests of Bergoglio being service and scholarship, works among the poor, and similar pursuits. The new priestly life was coming to fulfillment amidst America’s political upheaval in the ’70s: the military dictatorship ruling from 1976 to 1983 had opened fire upon the Church, accusing it of either colluding in so-called human rights violations or turning a blind eye to them.
The Pain of Exile and Isolation
The ’70s were years of turbulence for Bergoglio, but just amid the same days, he suffered internal confrontation and differed in opinion with his order since those days as a young Jesuit provincial superior. His so-called rigid leadership style, which was later branded as iron-fisted, was soon to land him in almost exile in Córdoba, Argentina. Two dark ones deserved to be named thus because that was how he endured those strange two years.
The isolation underwent an unspeakably chaotic spiritual and emotional crisis, praying and working as a confessor, and radically rethinking everything. He would later say this very ordeal of the dark two years purified him into humility and compassion, certainly very distinctive specifications of his papacy.
Political Winds Bluster Through Church Ranks
Bergoglio then became slowly and steadily regaining lost ground in the Church. In 1998, he became Bishop of Buenos Aires, known for a simple lifestyle of sometimes cooking for himself in a humble apartment away from the archbishop’s residence and often visiting the shantytowns.
But no sooner are the shadows of the past lifted from him? Charges of his having been an accomplice by silence to the killings of his priests by the dictatorship in Argentina simply would not cease. And, as he said, those would weigh heavily on him.
An Astonishing Election in 2013
Little would anyone think of Bergoglio as a candidate for the papacy after the shock of Benedict’s sudden resignation, one of the monumental surprises in the contemporary history of the Church. However, at the beginning of the conclave, there stood a man who had suffered, who had known defeat, and who stood in very stark humility.
He was elected pope on March 13, 2013, taking the name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, who represented poverty and renewal. His first words were brief and direct.
A Papacy Brought by the Weight of Suffering
Pope Francis is marked by his compassion for the marginalized, his battle for Church reform, and his candidness about difficult truths. All these intimately connect him to those whose journeys are burdened by heartaches: exile, political scrutiny, and self-doubt.
From foot-washing prisoners to arms reaching out for refugees: the man has walked through the deepest shadows of life experience and learned. In his own words: “One must learn to let oneself be loved by God.”
And suffering did not break him; rather, it has made him the pope of whom the world is in current need.
