Annuntio vobis
gaudium magnum
Habemus Papam!
A Church that will not stay still, a non-static Church, we
can be sure that this will be the church of Pope Francis.
This has always set Bergoglio apart.
A great Jesuit, a man of excellent formation, above all,
he is a man of action.
If we read Pope Francis' writings we're going to always
see this concern with going to the frontiers of poverty,
of exclusion and of those who are furthest from God.
He was always a person who had a lot of courage and plenty of
bravery to stand before the powerful and say what he
thought; the voice of those who had no voice;
that was Cardinal Bergoglio.
A man who is kind of a desert saint and a great
and brilliant administrator.
The combination of these two characteristics is
not very common.
Pope Francis, whose life has been exemplary in precisely
the type of personal witness that the new
evangelization calls for.
He becomes the model for millions of Catholics around
the world today.
More than four decades after he first entered the seminary,
Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was elevated to the
College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II in
St. Peter's Square.
It was 2001.
Argentina's economy was mired in crisis between a collapsed
government, widespread unemployment, riots and
a devalued currency.
For Cardinal Bergoglio his duty was simple.
Protect the innocent and comfort the suffering.
Bergoglio always used to say that the poor, and the people
that are left on the street, he would say that the side of the
road becomes invisible.
And Bergoglio would always say that we end up not seeing them,
they form part of an unknown landscape.
He wanted us to open our eyes so that we could take
them into account.
And I'd be sitting here, "Hello father," I'd say.
And I would get down and greet him.
Before leaving the last thing he always said was,
"Pray for me, hallelujah."
He always said, "Pray for me."
He has always been the same, worried about the problems of
humankind, the injustices and the poverty.
He walked through the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires
and San Miguel.
He walked everywhere, and he knew and loved the people and
they loved him very much.
The fact is he was always a person that liked to learn about
reality by living it.
You would always run into him in the neighborhoods.
He was never a desk priest.
For me he was a very down to earth and normal because I would
travel with him in the subway, I would speak with him and he
would come to our parish, we would go walking in the streets
together, he was our priest, he was one of the priests of
our neighborhood, the priest of the villa.
In truth, it pains me to have lost him...
If we needed something we would call him, Bergoglio would always
lend a hand.
Bergoglio is always listening.
Bergoglio had a phrase that he used more than once,
"The Church has to be on the borders."
Then he would tell the priests, "You don't call the people to
the Churches, you have to go where the people are."
As a child, Bergoglio was raised by his maternal Grandmother.
His love for her profoundly impacted his views on care for
the elderly and the dying.
His Grandmother impacted him very much and he had such a
great admiration, a great care for the elderly.
He always said that society should not abandon them,
but look after them, care for them.
He had this great concern.
Cardinal Bergoglio's consistent stand for Catholic values in
every area; for the poor, the unborn, and the sanctity of
marriage - drew the ire of Argentina's political elites.
Pope Francis, really has a big problem with the structure of
governments, especially in Argentina where you have this
kind of political entrepreneurship.
The leadership lives in a very ostentatious manner, and the
poor are suffering, a lot of poverty and exclusion and
Cardinal Bergoglio opposed this.
When Nestor and Cristina Kirchner pushed to legalize same
sex marriage in Argentina in 2010, Bergoglio opposed the
plan, noting that every child deserved both a mother
and a father.
President Cristina Kirchner was outraged at his opposition to
the law and attacked him personally, accusing Bergoglio
of leading a modern day inquisition.
But whether it was social or moral issues,
Bergoglio consistently defended the Catholic position as it
related to the lives of Argentinians.
What becomes very clear in looking at the life of Pope
Francis is a Christian witness that is focused on great
respect and charity for the human person.
He does not choose between social justice or social issues
because he sees a unity of all of these issues.
He cared about the social situation of the needy,
the elderly, and the children; that concern was misinterpreted
by the media.
He never intervened in politics; that is true.
Reporters interpreted his words as allusions to politics and
that's another thing.
Cardinal Bergoglio wrote that his strongly worded homilies
were not expressions of partison politics, but a message for
everyone about the need for morality in daily life.
But the media and some politicians took or
applied it personally.
President Nestor Kichner came out of the church and announced
that Bergoglio was the "leader of the opposition."
There was a lot of resentment there and that was an
opportunity for them to sort of collude and put the narrative
out there that Bergoglio was a collaborator with
the military government.
Left wing journalist and former leftist guerilla
Horacio Verbitsky accused Bergoglio of being complicit in
the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests during the violent
turmoil of Argentina's infamous "dirty war" in the 1970's.
There has long been a political vendetta in Argentina between
the people on the left who lost the dirty war and didn't manage
to turn Argentina into a communist country and the people
on the right who fought against them.
And Father Bergoglio was caught in the middle of that.
And because he did not ally himself with the guerillas
during the war they have had a long-standing
resentment against him.
What is true is that these hypotheses always became a
policy against Bergoglio supported by the government of
Nestor and Cristina Kirchner who have always seen Bergoglio as
a political enemy.
Horacio Verbitsky actually worked for the guerillas.
He is an editor at a newspaper called Pagina Doce.
Argentines laugh and they call it the official gazette because
it so much speaks the government's line.
I think he truly saw this as an opportunity to inflict damage
on the church.