With hope as a key theological virtue, Catholics are not allowed to despair. Not of ourselves nor of our Church nor of the unfolding of history. But for a young American Catholic coming of age at the turn of the millennium, I found that a tall order.
A ghastly sex abuse crisis had shattered the Church’s moral authority, Pope John Paul II’s health left him unable to effectively lead, and the US Conference of Bishops seemed so fixated on sexual morality and abortion that the broader revolutionary message of Christianity—about the poor and the outcast—became less of a voice crying out in the wilderness than a bare whisper in an empty room. The Church felt too reactionary, too calcified, too comfortable, crouching defensively rather than leading a charge against the spiritual and moral ills of our time. Pope Benedict XVI, an admittedly brilliant theological mind elevated to the papacy in 2005, didn’t offer much change. But then, on the 13th of May, 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope, and from the moment he took the name Francis (“The man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man,” he explained to reporters, for he “would like a poor Church, and for the poor.”), I felt startling, unexpected hope. And I wasn’t alone.
“I never thought I’d have a pope like this in my lifetime,” a priest I know told me. “It must be divine providence, I can’t think of any other explanation.” This pope—who died at age 88 this week after prolonged respiratory complications—allowed theological dissent, spoke forcefully about environmentalism, emphasized the brutal effects of globalism, all with a wide, welcoming, and slightly impish smile. There weren’t major doctrinal shifts during his pontificate, but there was a long-needed breath of fresh air. “I’m not that religious,” an elderly relative once told me. “But I do believe in Mother Teresa. And Pope Francis.”
Part of the shock of his papacy was how out of character it was from his earlier history. Born in Buenos Aires in 1936, the young Bergoglio studied in technical schools and worked as a janitor, a bouncer, and a lab technician. After becoming a Jesuit priest at 32, he rapidly rose through the clergy, serving as superior of the Jesuit province of Argentina until 1979, only four years after taking final vows. Three years later, a military dictatorship took over the country and violently suppressed the population, kidnapping and killing up to 30,000 alleged leftists, including two Jesuits jailed for their work in poor neighborhoods. One of them, Father Orlando Yurio, would accuse Bergoglio of allowing their abduction, albeit with little evidence, and supporters of Francis point to his work helping other dissidents flee the regime. Undoubtedly, though, he was at odds with the Jesuit community he led.
Some Jesuits, a famously intellectual and progressive order of priests, chafed under his discipline and his conservative theology. “He seemed unaware of any teachings of Vatican II,” one of his students later complained. “It was all Saint Thomas Aquinas and the old Church fathers.” Bergoglio was also, intriguingly, committed to popular piety. One critic complained that he encouraged students to go to the chapel at night and touch images: “This was something the poor did, the people of the pueblo, something that the society of Jesus worldwide just doesn’t do. I mean, touching images…What is that?”
He’d eventually be sent into exile in Córdoba before being named auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992, where he was still enough of a toxic presence among the Jesuits that he was asked not to reside in Jesuit houses.
Upon his ascension to the papacy, the news agency Reuters described him as a “theological conservative,” and progressive Catholics braced themselves. A Jesuit and family friend told me that the day after his election the mood among the Jesuits in Rome was like being “at a wake.”
