Who is argentine cardinal jorge bergoglio

This was a story: Popes had never before carried their own luggage. During an impromptu press conference on the plane an hour and a half later, after the pope had talked at length about young people who had no jobs and who felt discarded by a society in which old people had long been treated as similarly disposable, one reporter asked what was in the briefcase.

So what did it contain? I always take this bag when I travel. In April , at the age of just 36, he was made provincial superior, the head of all Jesuits in his home country of Argentina as well as neighboring Uruguay.

There were two main, and intertwined, areas of conflict. One was religious, the other political. The religious division was over the Second Vatican Council, which shook the Catholic Church to its foundations between and Vatican II famously threw open the windows of a Church seeking greater interaction with, and influence on, secular society. The progressives wanted a more outward-facing spirituality and a shift to working with the uneducated poor in the shantytowns.

The political division centered on Liberation Theology, a new approach to Catholic teaching that declared a need to liberate the poor not just spiritually but also from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. Progressives were enthused. Conservatives rejected the theology as Marxist, and a way of allowing communism into Latin America through the back door.

By his own admission Bergoglio was a political animal. As a teenager he had been interested in the relationship between faith and communism. But his central political formation occurred in the context of Peronism, a peculiarly Argentine amalgam of forces not elsewhere associated with one another: the military, the trade unions, and the Church. Named after General Juan Domingo Peron, who was president of Argentina for a decade from onwards, Peronism had its roots in Catholic social teachings and involved a new industrialization to boost the economy and a substantial redistribution of wealth to ensure that the working class benefited from it.

What was distinctive about Peronism was the way it brought together the physical might of the military and the moral authority of the Church to enforce authoritarian policies, which included suppression of the opposition and the press. This lack of ideological consistency led the Peronist movement to split into dissenting factions.

Some extreme leftists developed anti-clerical, anti-Catholic positions. Right-wing Peronists saw themselves as defenders of the nation, private property, and Catholicism against the atheist, communist hordes. These Peronist factions did not just disagree; eventually they set up death squads that roamed the streets targeting opponents in killing sprees targeting opponents. He also worked to recover the church's traditional political influence in society, but his outspoken criticism of President Cristina Kirchner couldn't stop her from imposing socially liberal measures that are anathema to the church, from gay marriage and adoption to free contraceptives for all.

Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptized! Bergoglio compared this concept of Catholicism, "this Church of 'come inside so we make decisions and announcements between ourselves and those who don't come in, don't belong," to the Pharisees of Christ's time — people who congratulate themselves while condemning all others.

This sort of pastoral work, aimed at capturing more souls and building the flock, was an essential skill for any religious leader in the modern era, said Bergoglio's authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin.

But Bergoglio himself felt most comfortable taking a very low profile, and his personal style was the antithesis of Vatican splendor. This sense of humility is very well seen in Rome," Rubin said before the conclave to choose Benedict's successor. Bergoglio's influence seemed to stop at the presidential palace door after Nestor Kirchner and then his wife, Cristina Fernandez, took over the Argentina's government. His outspoken criticism couldn't prevent Argentina from becoming the Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, or stop Fernandez from promoting free contraception and artificial insemination.

His church had no say when the Argentine Supreme Court expanded access to legal abortions in rape cases, and when Bergoglio argued that gay adoptions discriminate against children, Fernandez compared his tone to "medieval times and the Inquisition.

This kind of demonization is unfair, says Rubin, who obtained an extremely rare interview of Bergoglio for his biography, the "The Jesuit. He's no third-world priest. Does he criticize the International Monetary Fund, and neoliberalism?

Does he spend a great deal of time in the slums? Yes," Rubin said. Bergoglio has stood out for his austerity. Even after he became Argentina's top church official in , he never lived in the ornate church mansion where Pope John Paul II stayed when visiting the country, preferring a simple bed in a downtown building, heated by a small stove on frigid weekends. For years, he took public transportation around the city, and cooked his own meals.

Among the afflictions Jorge Bergoglio denounced repeatedly as cardinal, and later as Pope, are those of poverty and injustice. In , speaking at the Aparecida Conference, he denounced ever more severe inequality: "This globalisation as an economic and social ideology," he said, "has negatively affected our poorest sectors.

The injustices and inequalities are ever greater and deeper. The powerful eat the weakest. As a consequence of this situation, large masses of the population are excluded and marginalised". In , reflecting on the theme "Culture and popular religiosity," the Archbishop of Buenos Aires stressed that "a culture of death" is advancing.

Another distinctive feature of Pope Francis' pontificate is linked to the concept of fraternity, which is at the heart of the encyclical Fratelli tutti. Before leaving for Rome for the conclave, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires prepared a homily that he intended to deliver on 28 March , during the Chrism Mass. British Man: "Very beautiful, this is the first time of my life to watch this. It's white. I'm so happy. Prior to Pope Francis' election, many analysts had speculated that the cardinals would decide it was time to elect a pontiff who was not European.

Like their new pope, more than 40 percent of the world's Catholics are from Latin America. And as the number of Catholics has decreased in Europe in recent years, Africa and Asia have seen more followers filling the pews. Francis inherits the reins of a bureaucracy that is still struggling to overcome scandal, including child sex abuse cases involving the clergy that date back decades and the theft and release of documents from the papal residence revealing alleged corruption in the Vatican administration.

Photo Gallery: Pope Francis.