The first Latin American pontiff, Pope Francis was born on December 17, 1963. He was one of the five children, the current Pope suffered respiratory illness during his youth which left him with only one lung.
The former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was a chemical engineer by profession but he entered the seminary in the Villa Devoto neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Last 1958, he joined the Jesuit order and studied Humanities in Chile before his returned to his city in 1960 and got a degree in philosophy.
In 1969, Jorge Bergoglio was ordained as priest and after four years he was named as Provincial Superior in Argentina, a post he held until 1979. In 1997, he was named as coadjutor archbishop of Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, whom he replaced as Archbishop of Buenos Aires when the cardinal died in 1998. He was the fist from the Jesuit Order to ever told this post.
During the year 2001, he was named as cardinal by the world’s most popular pontiff, Pope John Paul II. During the 2002 Argentina’s economic crisis, Bergoglio attacked the nation’s politicians in his homilies, pointing to the terrible poverty and marginalization.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio’s named appeared as one of the possible successors to Pope John Paul II in 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI was declared as Pope.
Pope Francis Membership:
Congregations: for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments; for the Clergy; for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life ;
Pontifical Council for the Family;
Pontifical Commission for Latin America;
XI Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
