PROFILE • POPE FRANCIS

The Church Searches For New Rhythms

Pope Francis has invited the Church to engage herself in an exercise of mutual listening through a two-year long Synod on synodality—but who is the man behind this bold initiative?

BY Marian Pallister | Chair of Pax Christi Scotland

IN THE same way that we find it difficult to imagine the young lives of our parents and grandparents—did they really have those cool hairstyles, ride pillion on a stranger’s motorbike, bravely take part in that protest? The previous lives led by the incumbents of the Vatican can seem totally disconnected from the men we see in the papal role.

Who knew, for instance, that Pope Francis danced a mean tango back in the day? That shouldn’t come as too great a surprise. An Argentinian who can tango is a man who can reach out to the marginalised, the ‘other’ in society; a man who can not only hear the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth, but a man who feels those cries in his heart of hearts.

Tango

So before we explore the man, we should perhaps delve into the dance. A dance that still has the power to shock, but has a history that is much more than the sexy moves we see on TV dance competitions—South African professional dancer Oti Mabuse has won the UK Strictly Come Dancing glitter ball several times after some spectacular tango performances with celebrities.

The dance was first named—and banned—in Argentina in 1789, when it was danced by slaves and free working class people living in the port areas of Buenos Aires, the word perhaps coming to South America with slaves shipped from Nigeria. By the early 20th century, however, the music and moves of the tango stirred the emotions of thousands of young immigrant men who arrived in Argentina looking for a future denied them in a failing Europe.

Son of migrants

Indeed, Pope Francis’s father, Mario José Bergoglio, was one of those young men—an Italian from Portacomaro in the Province of Asti. He was just 20 years old when his family emigrated from Italy in 1929, not for economic reasons but to escape Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. There is no evidence that Mario José wooed the young Regina Sivori (an Argentinian of northern Italian background) with emotive tango moves, but he won her heart and together the young accountant and his wife had five children. The eldest was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis.

The journey to the Vatican from Flores, a suburb of Buenos Aires, where he was born on 17 December 1936, was one that saw him sweep floors, work as a bouncer and as a chemical technician—and dance the tango to the traditional Argentinian and Uruguayan music that he still enjoys. On that journey, he has mingled with people from every walk of life. He experienced the joys and sadness that we all feel; the difficulties and successes that come into every life. He fell in love and had to argue with his spiritual self over whether to continue his studies to become a priest. Despite taking vows as a Jesuit, he didn’t see eye-to-eye with them over the trend of the Society of Jesus towards an emphasis on social justice rather than his own stress on religiosity and pastoral work—perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of his younger life when we see the man he has become.

Listening ear

A man with these experiences, however, is a man we can well imagine would want to question how people perceive the Catholic Church today and where they hope it is going. A man who understands that it isn’t only cardinals, bishops, and priests who ‘know’ the Church and have its interests (their own interests?) at heart, but that everyone must be offered this experience of synodality as we walk with our Church through this difficult century—from the migrant washed up on a foreign shore to the Papal Nuncio, from the divorcee alienated from her Church to the members of canonical tribunals, from the parishioner ‘nostalgic’ for a Latin Mass that disappeared before she was born to the liberation theologian seeking a Church that hears those cries of the earth and of the poor.

His life story is well documented—this Jorge Mario Bergoglio who chose to become ‘Francis’ because of his affinity with the saint who gave his life to the poor, who heard their cry and the cry of the earth.

Early age

Young Jorge attended a Salesian-run school, Wilfrid Barón de los Santos Ángeles, in a province of Buenos Aires. He went on to a technical secondary school and graduated with a chemical technician’s diploma. It was during his student days that he worked as a janitor, and as a bouncer in a local bar. Having graduated, he was employed for the next few years in the food section of Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory.

An Argentinian who can tango is a man who can reach out to the marginalised, the ‘other’ in the society

It wasn’t all plain sailing. At the age of 21, he developed pneumonia and with his young life in the balance, doctors removed part of a lung. Like any young man, once recovered, he was back enjoying movies, football (he has supported San Lorenzo all his days), and yes, dancing the tango.

Then happened that he felt that call to the priesthood and studied at the Archdiocesan seminary, before entering the Society of Jesus as a novice in 1958. His calling was challenged when he was attracted to a young woman, but having worked through that challenge, he went on to study in Chile before taking his vows as a Jesuit in March 1960.

Teacher and psychologist

That same year, he gained a qualification to teach philosophy, and he went on to teach literature and psychology at Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepcion High School in Santa Fe. In 1966, he went to Buenos Aires to teach the same course at the Colegio del Salvador.

On that journey, he has mingled with people from every walk of life

That he taught psychology comes as no surprise. The way he deals with today’s world—with politicians, migrants, children, with people from every faith, every ethnicity—is daily evidence of someone who has studied the human mind and knows how to respond in so many different situations. Who couldn’t be moved by the social media clip of the little boy interrupting Pope Francis speaking in the Vatican audience hall? Pope Francis told officials to let the child play, and after talking to his mother, told his audience, “That boy cannot speak. He is mute, but he knows how to communicate, how to express himself. He has something that makes me think. He is free.” Adding with a chuckle that evoked laughter from the audience, “Indisciplined-ly free!” He then used the incident to remind the audience that Jesus tells us to be more like children, saying that he asks himself if he is as free with God. Good pastoral response—good psychology all round.

The priest

It was in 1969 that Jorge Bergoglio was ordained and he continued his training at the University of Alcala de Henares in Spain, making his final profession with the Jesuits in 1973. He returned to Argentina, was novice master at Barilari, San Miguel, then professor at the Faculty of Theology of San Miguel, and Rector of the Colegio Maximo of the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology. Then from 1973 to 1979 he was Provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina. He went back to working in the university in 1980, as well as serving as a parish priest in San Miguel. His superiors clearly saw promise in this man, after he had advanced his theological studies in Germany, he was asked to teach at the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires, then to be spiritual director and confessor at the Jesuit Church in Cordoba. He became Bishop of Auca and Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in May 1992, and along the way he penned three books—Meditaciones para religiosos (Meditations for Religious, 1982), Reflexiones sobre la vida apostólica (Reflections on the Apostolic Life, 1992), and Reflexiones de esperanza (Reflections of Hope, 1992).

Archbishop and cardinal

By 1998 he was Archbishop, Primate of Argentina, and in 2001, Pope John Paul II created him Cardinal. Here we get a real flavour of the man he was becoming. He had to go to Rome to celebrate this new position, but he asked the faithful in Argentina not to travel with him but instead to donate the cost of an airfare to the poor.

This trajectory of elevation did not change his way of life. That decision not to live in papal splendour in Rome continued a lifetime’s lifestyle.  He had continued to live an ascetic life despite his archbishop’s mitre and cardinal’s red hat, declining various appointments that would perhaps require a different approach. However, he was elected as President of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference in 2005 and again in 2008. Then, in 2013, he was elected Supreme Pontiff.

What we have seen in the years since then seems rooted in his time as Archbishop of the immense diocese of Buenos Aires—a diocese with over three million inhabitants in which the majority of the population has European origins; a sophisticated diocese boasting a city known as the Paris of South America yet capital of a country in which four out of ten people live below the poverty line.

And so, throughout his life, Jorge Bergoglio—son of an immigrant, nightclub bouncer, chemical technician, priest, professor, Archbishop and Cardinal— was exposed to the plight of the migrant, the cry of the poor, the melting pot that his city offered to so many different ethnic and religious backgrounds. A missionary project he initiated during his time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which sought to establish open and brotherly communities, emphasised that we are all brothers and sisters—the origins of Fratelli Tutti? That same project put the laity in a leading role, and the intention was to reach out to every one of those three million inhabitants—genesis of the synodality process we are now experiencing? The solidarity he urges us to adopt now that he is Pope Francis surely is rooted in a campaign he launched to commemorate the bicentenary of Argentina’s independence.

Pope of simplicity and fraternity

Pope Francis continues his simple lifestyle, condemns war (having lived through conflict in 1970s Argentina), understands migration, welcomes refugees. He offers the laity a bigger say in our Church—recognising that we are the Church. He’s the Pope who took a taxi to a Rome record store, caught out by a vigilant photographer at the taxi rank. The record store owners say he likes Beethoven, Mozart and Bach—and tango!