Humble cleric cooks for himself
At the outset of the conclave, few Vatican-watchers were even ranking him as the top Argentine candidate. The 76-year-old had been overshadowed by his fellow countryman, Leonardo Sandri, 69, a Vatican diplomat.
But having reportedly trailed second in every ballot to Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires triumphed in the fifth ballot to choose his successor, becoming the first Jesuit to ascend to the throne of St. Peter, as well as the first from outside Europe in modern times.
“His own simplicity of life, I think will be a great example to people,” said Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the former archbishop of Westminister.
The new Pope is the son of a railway worker who was an Italian immigrant to Argentina.
Born into a middle-class family of five children in the Argentine capital on Dec 17 1936, he studied chemistry before deciding to become a Catholic priest.
After further studies in Chile and Argentina, he taught literature and psychology at a high school in Argentina and a leading Jesuit college. He was ordained as a priest in December 1969, aged 32, and was installed as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in February 1998.
As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he spurned the trappings of the church, living in his own apartment. The prelate has even been known to cook his own meals.
“In favour of Bergoglio is his pastoral attitude, as they say in the Church — his relationship with the people,” said Leandro Pastor, a friend of the new Pope for a quarter of a century who is philosophy professor at the University of Buenos Aires. “He’s a very simple man. He’s very austere. And also, I think he’s an intelligent man and someone who is very good at communicating.”
But he has also campaigned strongly against the progressive social agenda of the Argentine government.
Like John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, he regards the Roman Catholic Church’s core values as under attack from secular society.
But the cardinal’s influence stopped at the presidential palace door after Nestor Kirchner and then his wife, Cristina Fernandez, took over Argentina’s government. Sources close to Bergoglio reportedly said: “The relationship with Kirchner is not bad: it is awful.”
He failed to prevent the Argentine supreme court decision to expand access to legal abortions in rape cases, and when Bergoglio argued that gay adoptions discriminated against children, Fernandez compared his tone to “medieval times and the Inquisition”.
A fan of the writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jorge Luis Borges, Pope Francis is said to get up at 4:30 a.m. and go to bed at 9 p.m., unlike most Argentines, who are renowned for staying up late into the night.