Francisco I, the new pope

The Pope’s Profile

The new pope of the Catholic Church.

Young Life :

His real name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the 17^th of December, 1936. He was the older of five children. Studied on the National School of Industrial Technical Education # 27, Hipolito Yrigoyen where he graduated as chemical technician, when he finished he started working at a laboratory called Hickethier-Bachmann, but he always had the religious spirit .

As a Jesuit priest:

At 21 years old, in 1957, he decided to become a priest. He entered to  the seminary of Villa Devoto neighborhood, as a novice of the Society of Jesus and ended his studies as a seminarian at the Jesuit Seminary of Santiago de Chile.

He became priest on December 13, 1969, when he was 33 years old.

As a Bishop and Cardinal:

He was part of the Commission for Latin America, the Congregation for the Clergy.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires he was also a member of the Episcopal Conference of Argentina, of which he was president for two consecutive periods from 2005 until 2008 and from 2008 to 2011. He was known because of his humility and commitment to social justice and also is for being a very simple man.

Background:

During the conclave of 2005 seems to have been one of the best cardinals, Benedict XVI was his rival but as all know Benedict won.

As Pope:

In March 13, 2013, Cardinal Bergoglio was elected successor of Benedict XVI, the second day of the conclave, in the fifth round of voting.

It is the first South American pope and the first that is not native of Europe, Middle East or North Africa. He is also the first Hispanic pope after Alexander VI.

Cardinal Bergoglio chose the name Francisco I as his pontifical name in honor of St. Francis of Assis, Franciscan Order and was characterized by his dedication to the poor and humility.

(Camila Maurtua)

Francisco I and his relationship with Jorge Rafael Videla

Jorge Rafael Videla was a dictator of Argentina and went against many human rights during his dictatorship. He was related with the new Pope, Francisco I, after a picture (the one at the left) was seen by lots of people after travelling all around websites such as Twitter and Facebook. It was thought that he had a close relationship with, in that time, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, so many questions and judgments were done by people. Also it was known that they had meet before he became Pope. It was said that after he took away the license of two Jesuits priests, Francisco Jalics and Orlando Yorio, these two were kidnaped, in 1976, he was blamed of this and he was denounced in 1986, in the book “Iglesia y Dictadura” (Church and Dictatorship), written by Emilio Mignone, who had a missing daughter. He was also blamed of the kidnaping of children. The first time that these accusations were brought to life was when the journalist Horacio Verbitsky published his book “Silencio” (Silence).

But then the picture which alarmed people was closely analyzed, the priest giving the communion to Videla was not Bergoglio, was Carlos Berón de Astrada. The accusation made about the relationship of them was not true. The Pope was the one who then, declared in 2010, that he had gathered two times with Videla to discuss the liberation of the two Jesuits priests who had been retained by the Army and that after this were released. The Pope also said that before they were retained he told them to be careful because of the comments that he had heard about priests doing pastoral work in poor neighborhoods.  

(Alessandra Roncal)

The pope’s relationship with Kristina Fernandez de Kirchner the president of Argentina

There has been tension between the pope and the Kirchner’s since 2003, when Nestor Kirchner (Cristina’s deceased husband) was indirectly criticized by Jorge Bergoglio (the new pope).  However things got worst in 2005 when the president announced he wasn’t assisting to an important event in the cathedral of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Some months after that the Pope’s spokesman announced that there was no relationship between the church and the government.

In 2007, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was elected president of Argentina and a few months after entering the power in 2008 she induced the “Resolución 125” which was a new system applied to the export of soy, sunflower seeds, corn and wheat.

This new system caused one of the major crises in Argentina’s history. The people carried out a strike that lasted for 129 days, and they were supported by Bergoglio which only caused more rivalry between these two characters.

The biggest dispute came when Cristina Fernández legalized gay marriage; the Pope opposed her because the Church is against it due to the fact that it goes against their moral and believes.

Despite their past arguments, Fernández de Kirchner congratulated Bergoglio just after he was elected Pope and as well confirmed her assistance to the first mass of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the Pope.

Recently Cristina asked the Pope for his help in the Malvinas conflict which involves England and Argentina. It seems like Cristina’s dislike for Bergoglio is gone. Some people believe that it has to do with propaganda for Argentina’s next elections and not losing the votes of those who support someone as important as the Pope.

(Lia Rizo Patron)


The problems the Pope has to deal with


Child molester:
The Catholic Church had always been involved in sex abuse cases committed by Catholic priests mostly. Most of the victims are children between the ages of 11 and 14 but it even includes 3 year old babies. The scandal had spread through 65 countries approximately with the numbers of victims increasing everyday more. There is a big group of 12,000 survivals members with heartbreaking stories to tell but there are also victims who prefer to stay quiet or even deny it because they feel ashamed of it. 
This worldwide problem as it is expected had to be treated by the Pope so that he could try to decrease the number of these horrible cases which happened regularly in Catholic churches. But Pope Benedict gave no importance to this scandal and didn’t even mention anything about it in all of his papacy. 
Pope Benedict’s big failure was keeping mute to this terrible problem. He new clearly about this subject, yet he kept quiet and did to little to protect the innocent children. He was a complicit of a criminal conspiracy to cover up the thousands of pedophilia cases. Millions of guileless children suffered every year by priests that tried to seduce them or the ones who even achieved to abuse sexually of them. Yet this scandal wasn’t resolved by the Pope because of his lack of interest. 
Many victims groups even say Pope Benedict was a complicit in child sex abuse scandals. He knew more about this topic than anyone else in the church yet did little to protect the children.  
Now a new papacy legacy had started, and it is Pope’s Francis I job to take charge of this catastrophic problem.  
(Andrea Bosio)

The Vatileak scandal

The vatileak scandal came to light in late January 2012. The Pope´s butler gave information about some private letters written by Carlo Maria Vigano to the Pope, and also he gave information about some private documents. All this information were known in an Italian show program called “The Untouchables”, besides that, the information was spread among some journalists, that later on they published this information in their newspapers.

Paolo Gabriele, the Pope´s butler, was arrested for being a theft after some policemen found private documents at his Vatican flat. He declared that the cause of what he did was to stop the “evil and corruption “in the church. However this doesn’t stopped him for going to jail, in which he will spent 18 months in there.

Now the Vatican, had introduce new security, to prevent what happened. All the Vatican clergy and employees will be issued with an identity card with microchip-tracking devices. 

( Catalina Zegarra-Ballón )