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The pope’s death was announced by the Vatican in a statement on X, a day after Francis appeared in his wheelchair to bless the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday. The cause of death was a stroke followed by a coma and irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse, the Vatican said.
Throughout his 12-year papacy, Francis was a change agent, having inherited a Vatican in disarray in 2013 after the stunning resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, a standard-bearer of Roman Catholic conservatism.
Francis steadily steered the church in another direction, restocking its leadership with a diverse array of bishops who shared his pastoral, welcoming approach as he sought to open up the church. Many rank-and-file Catholics approved, believing that the church had become inward-looking and distant from ordinary people.
Francis reached out to migrants, the poor and the destitute, to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members, and to alienated gay Catholics. He traveled to often-forgotten and far-flung countries and sought to improve relations with an antagonistic Chinese government, Muslim clerics and leaders from across the fragmented Christian world.
After some early stumbles, he took strong steps to address a clerical sex abuse crisis that had become an existential threat to the church. He adopted new rules to hold top religious leaders, including bishops, accountable if they committed sexual abuse or covered it up, though he did not impose the level of transparency or civil reporting obligations that many advocates demanded.
In his final years, slowed by a bad knee, intestinal surgery and respiratory ailments that sapped his breath and voice, Francis used a cane and then a wheelchair, seemingly a diminished figure. But that was a misleading impression. He continued to travel widely, focusing on exploited and war-torn parts of Africa, where he excoriated modern-day colonizers and sought peace in South Sudan.
He also refused to endorse calls to deny communion to Catholic politicians supportive of abortion rights, including when he was president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said Francis had called him a “good Catholic.”
His avuncular charm and easy smile belied his reputation inside the Vatican as a steely — his opponents said ruthless — administrator as he brought greater transparency to church finances and overhauled the Vatican’s bureaucracy.
The traditional Italian power bases of the Vatican grew frustrated with his purposefully unpredictable governing style, which relied on a small group of confidants, many of them Jesuits like himself, and his own gut.
Conservative Catholics accused him of diluting church teachings and never stopped rallying against him. Simmering dissent periodically exploded into view in almost medieval fashion, with talk of schisms and heresy.
But Francis also disappointed many liberals, who hoped that he might introduce progressive policies. His openness to frank discussion gave oxygen to debates about long-taboo subjects, including priestly celibacy, communion for divorced and remarried people, and greater roles for women in the church. While he opened doors to talking about such issues, he tended to balk at making major decisions.
“We are often chained like Peter in the prison of habit,” he said of the church in 2022 in a speech in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Scared by change and tied to the chain of our customs.”
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| The Right Hand of Pope Francis |
A New Style
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of his papacy was that he became pope at all.
Francis was elected in March 2013 after the resignation of Benedict, the first pontiff to step down in nearly six centuries, amid turmoil and intrigue about secret lobbies and financial chicanery. The cardinal electors sought a reformer with a strong administrative hand, but few anticipated how Francis, then the 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires, would blend reformist zeal and folksy charm in a push to clean house and transform the church.
“Buona sera,” good evening, Francis announced to the faithful in his first remarks as pope from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, breaking the ice with unaffected style. He joked about being from Argentina, noting that in fulfilling their duty to produce a pope, “it seems that my brother cardinals have gone almost to the ends of the Earth to get him.”
Francis not only came from another part of the world: influenced by his Latin American populist roots, he also saw the world differently than his predecessors did. He became the first pontiff to take his papal name from St. Francis of Assisi, the austere friar who dedicated his life to piety and the poor and who, according to tradition, received instruction from God to rebuild his church.
Francis signaled his humble style from the outset. He paid his own bill at the Vatican hotel where he stayed during the conclave that elected him, rode about town in a modest Ford Focus, lived in a Vatican guesthouse rather than the ornate papal apartments and, in a Holy Week ritual performed at a youth prison, washed the feet of a young Muslim woman. Later, in his ailing years, he referred to his own frailty in demanding dignity for the aged.
His humility could be disarming. When asked about a priest who was said to be gay, he responded, “Who am I to judge?”
The comment made global headlines and signaled a dramatic change underway inside the Vatican.
Francis took over the church at a moment of crisis. In the industrialized world, it suffered from falling attendance, faith-draining clerical sexual abuse scandals, demands for a greater role for women and a dire shortage of priests. And in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where the faith was continuing to grow, the Catholic church faced increasing competition from Protestant evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
He soon tried to move the church away from divisive issues like abortion and homosexuality, and shifted its emphasis to global problems like climate change, poverty and migration. His first papal trip out of Rome was to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island that had become the point of arrival for thousands of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
His vision, expressed in major documents like the encyclical “Laudato Si,” or “Praise Be to You,” linked Catholic theology to protecting the environment and championing those on the margins, while denouncing the excesses of global capitalism in exploiting the poor.
He traveled frequently to the Arab world, where Christians faced persecution, to pursue détente with Islam, and repeatedly visited what he called the “peripheries,” the places and people often overlooked.
In 2019, Francis got on his hands and knees before the warring leaders of South Sudan’s government and its opposition, kissing their shoes and imploring them to make peace. In 2023, in declining health, he traveled to the capital city, Juba, to upbraid them on their lack of progress.
“No more bloodshed, no more conflicts, no more violence and mutual recriminations about who is responsible for it,” Francis said in the gardens of South Sudan’s presidential palace. “Leave the time of war behind and let a time of peace dawn!”
He repeatedly denounced violence and, after an initial reluctance to take sides in the war in Ukraine, spoke out in support of Ukraine. But Ukrainian officials worried that what he called the Vatican’s secret “mission” to mediate an end to the war, without explicitly rejecting Russia’s occupation, could unwittingly aid their enemy.
Francis could be scathing toward the prelates in the Vatican. He once compared the hierarchy to a “ponderous, bureaucratic customs house.” He accused some church officials of deluding themselves as being “indispensable” and afflicted by the “terrorism of gossip.”
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of his papacy was that he became pope at all.
Francis was elected in March 2013 after the resignation of Benedict, the first pontiff to step down in nearly six centuries, amid turmoil and intrigue about secret lobbies and financial chicanery. The cardinal electors sought a reformer with a strong administrative hand, but few anticipated how Francis, then the 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires, would blend reformist zeal and folksy charm in a push to clean house and transform the church.
“Buona sera,” good evening, Francis announced to the faithful in his first remarks as pope from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, breaking the ice with unaffected style. He joked about being from Argentina, noting that in fulfilling their duty to produce a pope, “it seems that my brother cardinals have gone almost to the ends of the Earth to get him.”
Francis signaled his humble style from the outset. He paid his own bill at the Vatican hotel where he stayed during the conclave that elected him, rode about town in a modest Ford Focus, lived in a Vatican guesthouse rather than the ornate papal apartments and, in a Holy Week ritual performed at a youth prison, washed the feet of a young Muslim woman. Later, in his ailing years, he referred to his own frailty in demanding dignity for the aged.
His humility could be disarming. When asked about a priest who was said to be gay, he responded, “Who am I to judge?”
The comment made global headlines and signaled a dramatic change underway inside the Vatican.
He soon tried to move the church away from divisive issues like abortion and homosexuality, and shifted its emphasis to global problems like climate change, poverty and migration. His first papal trip out of Rome was to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island that had become the point of arrival for thousands of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
His vision, expressed in major documents like the encyclical “Laudato Si,” or “Praise Be to You,” linked Catholic theology to protecting the environment and championing those on the margins, while denouncing the excesses of global capitalism in exploiting the poor.
He traveled frequently to the Arab world, where Christians faced persecution, to pursue détente with Islam, and repeatedly visited what he called the “peripheries,” the places and people often overlooked.
In 2019, Francis got on his hands and knees before the warring leaders of South Sudan’s government and its opposition, kissing their shoes and imploring them to make peace. In 2023, in declining health, he traveled to the capital city, Juba, to upbraid them on their lack of progress.
“No more bloodshed, no more conflicts, no more violence and mutual recriminations about who is responsible for it,” Francis said in the gardens of South Sudan’s presidential palace. “Leave the time of war behind and let a time of peace dawn!”
He repeatedly denounced violence and, after an initial reluctance to take sides in the war in Ukraine, spoke out in support of Ukraine. But Ukrainian officials worried that what he called the Vatican’s secret “mission” to mediate an end to the war, without explicitly rejecting Russia’s occupation, could unwittingly aid their enemy.
Francis could be scathing toward the prelates in the Vatican. He once compared the hierarchy to a “ponderous, bureaucratic customs house.” He accused some church officials of deluding themselves as being “indispensable” and afflicted by the “terrorism of gossip.”
That accusation against Francis proved unfounded, but he nevertheless had a long and painful learning curve on the sex abuse scandals. His initial calls for action yielded little, and when the crisis exploded again on his watch, he instinctively supported his fellow bishops and publicly doubted some victims, endangering his legacy as a defender of the downtrodden.
He ultimately regained his footing on the issue by recognizing his own blindness and by talking with abuse survivors. He never held bishops to account as much as some of his supporters had hoped. But he enacted meaningful reforms, sought to make the protection of children a priority for bishops around the world and, remarkably, ordered an exhaustive investigation that placed blame for Cardinal McCarrick’s ascent at the feet of Saint John Paul II.
On other issues, Francis could make it difficult to understand where he stood. He rejected same-sex marriage yet called on priests to be welcoming to people in nontraditional relationships, such as gay men and lesbians, single parents and unmarried couples who live together.
He supported civil unions for gay couples but approved a Vatican decision to bar priests from blessing them — a decision he later said he regretted, and then reversed.
He called the criminalization of homosexuality “unjust,” but also backed the Vatican’s opposition to a proposed Italian law extending protections to L.G.B.T.Q. people. And when Germany’s bishops overwhelmingly voted to bless gay couples in 2023, the Vatican cracked down with the pope’s approval.
Some of Francis’ defenders argued that his ambiguities and incrementalisms reflected a strategy to build a consensus for a larger, longer-lasting project — that of creating a more collegial church that shifted power away from Rome to local bishops and priests in the trenches.
After Benedict’s death ended the anomalous situation of two living popes, some of Francis’ supporters expected him to exercise a freer hand. They hoped for bold changes from a meeting of the world’s bishops in 2023 and 2024, where topics such as ordaining women as deacons and priestly celibacy and marriage were on the table. But the potentially explosive meeting ended with a whimper. The bishops called for women to be given more leadership roles but left the other major questions for another day.
Indeed, Francis’ most enduring legacy may be the transformation of the clerical ranks and the reshaping of the College of Cardinals, once dominated by conservatives appointed by Benedict and John Paul II.
In a hierarchy where personnel is policy, Francis’ supporters hope the clergy he promoted — and the successor they will choose — will cross the lines he dared walk up to.
Roots in Italy
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on Dec. 17, 1936, in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires to Mario Bergoglio and Regina (Sivori) Bergoglio, both of Italian descent.
The family’s passage to Argentina would become part of Bergoglio lore: Booked in steerage on the ocean liner Principessa Mafalda, the future pope’s paternal grandparents missed their departure because of delays in selling their coffee shop in Turin, Italy. But frustration soon turned to relief: The ship sank at sea. A few months later, they arrived safely in Buenos Aires aboard another liner, the Giulio Cesare.
Jorge, who was the eldest of five siblings, is survived by a sister, María Elena Bergoglio.
Growing up, Jorge was deeply influenced by his grandmother Rosa Bergoglio, who in Italy had joined Catholic Action, the 1920s movement that defended the church against the encroachment of Mussolini’s Fascist state. The rise of Fascism had helped push the family to leave.
In Flores, Rosa taught her grandson Italian inflected with the family’s native Piedmont dialect and a love of literature. His father, Mario, eager to assimilate, insisted on speaking Spanish.
Catholicism was a sustaining and nurturing force in the Bergoglio household. When his mother was bedridden after the difficult birth of one of his sisters, Jorge, then 12, was placed in a school run by Salesian priests. The Salesians helped imbue him with a sense of duty toward the poor, as well as a realization of his own responsibility for improving the state of the world.
“I learned, almost unconsciously, to seek the meaning of things,” he recalled.
Bookish, intelligent and deeply religious, Jorge also played basketball and loved to dance the tango. Barely six weeks short of his 17th birthday, he was rushing to meet his friends in Flores when he paused in front of the Basilica of St. Joseph.
“I felt I had to go in — those things you feel inside and you don’t know what they are,” he recounted. In the sanctuary, he said, he “felt like someone grabbed me from inside” and took him into the confessional. “Right there I knew I had to be a priest,” he said.
He often referred to a story about divine mercy describing the moment Jesus, by “showing mercy and by choosing,” miserando atque eligendo, captivated Matthew the tax collector. He said he felt the Lord was waiting for him too, and chose the Latin phrase for his motto.
“That’s me,” he later told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and friend who published an extensive interview with the pope. “How I felt.”
But Jorge hid his ambition from his family. In high school he had demonstrated a scientific aptitude, and his mother hoped he would become a doctor. He worked in a chemistry lab and earned pocket money as a doorman at tango bars.
In November 1955, just after graduating from high school, he finally told his parents of his plans for the priesthood. His mother was unhappy and accused him of misleading her. “I didn’t lie to you, Mom,” his sister, Maria Elena, recalled Jorge responding. “I’m going to study the medicine of the soul.”
Time in the Wilderness
After 13 years of training, Jorge Bergoglio was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1969. The Jesuits had arrived in South America in 1580, along with colonists from Spain and Portugal who subjugated the continent with the complicity of Rome.
The Jesuits, though, resisted some of the worst colonial abuses, creating self-ruled protectorates for Indigenous peoples. The future pope embraced this legacy: the closeness to the poor, the respect for Indigenous peoples, the suspicion of European expansion and the resistance to it, and a wariness toward secular ideologies.
Latin America and Catholicism were in turmoil when Father Bergoglio, at 36, took charge of the Argentine Jesuits. Argentina was in the throes of a “dirty war,” with a brutal military government killing and torturing thousands of opponents. And the Latin American church was sundered, as many senior prelates remained close to the ruling classes while many Jesuits embraced liberation theology, which called on the church to press for social change on behalf of the poor.
Conservative church leaders denounced that theology as Marxist. One of those critics was Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, an anti-Communist crusader from Poland, who in 1978 became Pope John Paul II and appointed conservative bishops who were antagonistic to liberation theology.
Father Bergoglio shared the view of the local church establishment that liberation theology was too political. He later faced accusations that as leader of the Argentine Jesuits he had done too little to protect two priests who were kidnapped and tortured by the junta, allegations later challenged by biographers and others. He eventually reconciled with one of the priests, but the other remained bitter.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on Dec. 17, 1936, in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires to Mario Bergoglio and Regina (Sivori) Bergoglio, both of Italian descent.
The family’s passage to Argentina would become part of Bergoglio lore: Booked in steerage on the ocean liner Principessa Mafalda, the future pope’s paternal grandparents missed their departure because of delays in selling their coffee shop in Turin, Italy. But frustration soon turned to relief: The ship sank at sea. A few months later, they arrived safely in Buenos Aires aboard another liner, the Giulio Cesare.
Jorge, who was the eldest of five siblings, is survived by a sister, María Elena Bergoglio.
Growing up, Jorge was deeply influenced by his grandmother Rosa Bergoglio, who in Italy had joined Catholic Action, the 1920s movement that defended the church against the encroachment of Mussolini’s Fascist state. The rise of Fascism had helped push the family to leave.
In Flores, Rosa taught her grandson Italian inflected with the family’s native Piedmont dialect and a love of literature. His father, Mario, eager to assimilate, insisted on speaking Spanish.
Catholicism was a sustaining and nurturing force in the Bergoglio household. When his mother was bedridden after the difficult birth of one of his sisters, Jorge, then 12, was placed in a school run by Salesian priests. The Salesians helped imbue him with a sense of duty toward the poor, as well as a realization of his own responsibility for improving the state of the world.
“I learned, almost unconsciously, to seek the meaning of things,” he recalled.
Bookish, intelligent and deeply religious, Jorge also played basketball and loved to dance the tango. Barely six weeks short of his 17th birthday, he was rushing to meet his friends in Flores when he paused in front of the Basilica of St. Joseph.
“I felt I had to go in — those things you feel inside and you don’t know what they are,” he recounted. In the sanctuary, he said, he “felt like someone grabbed me from inside” and took him into the confessional. “Right there I knew I had to be a priest,” he said.
He often referred to a story about divine mercy describing the moment Jesus, by “showing mercy and by choosing,” miserando atque eligendo, captivated Matthew the tax collector. He said he felt the Lord was waiting for him too, and chose the Latin phrase for his motto.
“That’s me,” he later told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and friend who published an extensive interview with the pope. “How I felt.”
But Jorge hid his ambition from his family. In high school he had demonstrated a scientific aptitude, and his mother hoped he would become a doctor. He worked in a chemistry lab and earned pocket money as a doorman at tango bars.
In November 1955, just after graduating from high school, he finally told his parents of his plans for the priesthood. His mother was unhappy and accused him of misleading her. “I didn’t lie to you, Mom,” his sister, Maria Elena, recalled Jorge responding. “I’m going to study the medicine of the soul.”
Time in the Wilderness
After 13 years of training, Jorge Bergoglio was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1969. The Jesuits had arrived in South America in 1580, along with colonists from Spain and Portugal who subjugated the continent with the complicity of Rome.
The Jesuits, though, resisted some of the worst colonial abuses, creating self-ruled protectorates for Indigenous peoples. The future pope embraced this legacy: the closeness to the poor, the respect for Indigenous peoples, the suspicion of European expansion and the resistance to it, and a wariness toward secular ideologies.
Latin America and Catholicism were in turmoil when Father Bergoglio, at 36, took charge of the Argentine Jesuits. Argentina was in the throes of a “dirty war,” with a brutal military government killing and torturing thousands of opponents. And the Latin American church was sundered, as many senior prelates remained close to the ruling classes while many Jesuits embraced liberation theology, which called on the church to press for social change on behalf of the poor.
Conservative church leaders denounced that theology as Marxist. One of those critics was Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, an anti-Communist crusader from Poland, who in 1978 became Pope John Paul II and appointed conservative bishops who were antagonistic to liberation theology.
Father Bergoglio shared the view of the local church establishment that liberation theology was too political. He later faced accusations that as leader of the Argentine Jesuits he had done too little to protect two priests who were kidnapped and tortured by the junta, allegations later challenged by biographers and others. He eventually reconciled with one of the priests, but the other remained bitter.
His Jesuit leadership ended in controversy. He had cultivated a passionate and loyal cadre of priests, but he had also made enemies, partly because of what critics called an imperious and autocratic management style. The church authorities sent him into de facto exile in Germany and then to Córdoba, Argentina, a period he later described as “a time of great interior crisis.”
After becoming pope, Francis acknowledged that his administrative style as a Jesuit leader had been imperfect.
“My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,” he told Father Spadaro. “But I have never been a right-winger.”
His exile, though, was interrupted in 1992 when a senior figure in the Argentine church unexpectedly named him auxiliary bishop of the Buenos Aires diocese. He became archbishop six years later and focused on outreach to the poor, assembling a group of priests dedicated to ministering in the slums.
During the country’s 2001-02 economic crisis, he organized food kitchens, tripled the number of priests assigned to the slums and built schools and drug rehabilitation centers as state services retrenched. He converted his official residence into a hostel for priests and lived in a modest room in the diocesan building in central Buenos Aires. Before every Easter, he visited prison inmates, AIDS patients or older people, a practice he continued during his papacy.
His suspicion of secular ideologies and theories, including capitalism, deepened. He contended that left-wing ideologies deified the state and economic neoliberalism eviscerated it. In 2006, at the traditional Catholic prayer of thanksgiving on Argentine Independence Day, Archbishop Bergoglio, by then a cardinal, made a thinly veiled critique of President Néstor Kirchner, who was in attendance.
Cardinal Bergoglio also had chilly relations with the Vatican. It represented “the heart of everything that he believed the church should not be: luxury, ostentation, hypocrisy, bureaucracy,” his former press officer in Buenos Aires, Federico Wals, told Austen Ivereigh, one of the pope’s biographers. “He hated going.”
After becoming pope, Francis acknowledged that his administrative style as a Jesuit leader had been imperfect.
“My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,” he told Father Spadaro. “But I have never been a right-winger.”
His exile, though, was interrupted in 1992 when a senior figure in the Argentine church unexpectedly named him auxiliary bishop of the Buenos Aires diocese. He became archbishop six years later and focused on outreach to the poor, assembling a group of priests dedicated to ministering in the slums.
During the country’s 2001-02 economic crisis, he organized food kitchens, tripled the number of priests assigned to the slums and built schools and drug rehabilitation centers as state services retrenched. He converted his official residence into a hostel for priests and lived in a modest room in the diocesan building in central Buenos Aires. Before every Easter, he visited prison inmates, AIDS patients or older people, a practice he continued during his papacy.
His suspicion of secular ideologies and theories, including capitalism, deepened. He contended that left-wing ideologies deified the state and economic neoliberalism eviscerated it. In 2006, at the traditional Catholic prayer of thanksgiving on Argentine Independence Day, Archbishop Bergoglio, by then a cardinal, made a thinly veiled critique of President Néstor Kirchner, who was in attendance.
Cardinal Bergoglio also had chilly relations with the Vatican. It represented “the heart of everything that he believed the church should not be: luxury, ostentation, hypocrisy, bureaucracy,” his former press officer in Buenos Aires, Federico Wals, told Austen Ivereigh, one of the pope’s biographers. “He hated going.”
After passing the bishop’s retirement age of 75, he reserved a simple room at a Catholic seminary, where he intended to live out his days in prayer and reflection, enjoying his beloved mate tea.
But Pope Benedict XVI changed all that on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced that he would resign. It was the first papal resignation since Gregory XII’s in 1415.
Cardinal Bergoglio flew to Rome to help elect a new pope. He never returned.
An Accidental Pope
In the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict as pope, Cardinal Bergoglio had finished second and left Rome that year with little reason to believe that he would have another chance at the papacy. There was little evidence that he even wanted the job.
With Benedict’s resignation, the news media was filled with speculation about who would succeed him, including expectations that the cardinals might select the first Latin American pope. Given his age, Cardinal Bergoglio wasn’t on the shortlist.
But as the voting began, a movement to elect him began to take shape. Many cardinals from outside Rome were furious about dysfunction at the Vatican and the imperiousness of the Roman curia, the bureaucracy of cardinals and other officials that oversees the church. They criticized the church’s response to the clerical sexual abuse crisis as inadequate. And a financial scandal was brewing at the opaque Vatican Bank.
Cardinal Bergoglio had a reputation as a tough, effective administrator, as well as someone who firmly believed in devolving power from the Vatican bureaucracies to bishops around the world.
A speech he made to cardinals before the conclave officially began made a mark, especially its emphasis on the church’s duty to come out of its comfortable shell in order to reach people at the physical and spiritual peripheries.
After Cardinal Bergoglio began accumulating votes, the weight of the papacy seemed to settle on him, witnesses recalled. It took two days, and on the fifth round of balloting, he crossed the 77-vote threshold for a two-thirds majority. Asked if he would accept the papacy, he responded, “Although I am a sinner, I accept.”
Cardinal Cláudio Hummes of Brazil hugged him and said, “Don’t forget the poor!” He did not.
But Pope Benedict XVI changed all that on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced that he would resign. It was the first papal resignation since Gregory XII’s in 1415.
Cardinal Bergoglio flew to Rome to help elect a new pope. He never returned.
An Accidental Pope
In the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict as pope, Cardinal Bergoglio had finished second and left Rome that year with little reason to believe that he would have another chance at the papacy. There was little evidence that he even wanted the job.
With Benedict’s resignation, the news media was filled with speculation about who would succeed him, including expectations that the cardinals might select the first Latin American pope. Given his age, Cardinal Bergoglio wasn’t on the shortlist.
But as the voting began, a movement to elect him began to take shape. Many cardinals from outside Rome were furious about dysfunction at the Vatican and the imperiousness of the Roman curia, the bureaucracy of cardinals and other officials that oversees the church. They criticized the church’s response to the clerical sexual abuse crisis as inadequate. And a financial scandal was brewing at the opaque Vatican Bank.
Cardinal Bergoglio had a reputation as a tough, effective administrator, as well as someone who firmly believed in devolving power from the Vatican bureaucracies to bishops around the world.
A speech he made to cardinals before the conclave officially began made a mark, especially its emphasis on the church’s duty to come out of its comfortable shell in order to reach people at the physical and spiritual peripheries.
After Cardinal Bergoglio began accumulating votes, the weight of the papacy seemed to settle on him, witnesses recalled. It took two days, and on the fifth round of balloting, he crossed the 77-vote threshold for a two-thirds majority. Asked if he would accept the papacy, he responded, “Although I am a sinner, I accept.”
Cardinal Cláudio Hummes of Brazil hugged him and said, “Don’t forget the poor!” He did not.
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