From the archives: A look back at Francis’ appointment as pope in March 2013.
When Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a cardinal from Argentina, was selected as the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, he became the first South American to lead the church.
Taking the name Francis, he was also the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years and the first member of the Jesuit order to lead the church.
In choosing the archbishop of Buenos Aires, who was 76 at the time, the cardinals sent a powerful message that the future of the church lay in the global south, home to the bulk of the world’s Catholics.
Born to Italian immigrant parents and raised in Buenos Aires, he was known as a humble man who spoke out for the poor and led an austere life in the Argentine capital.
He inherited a church wrestling with challenges, among them a shortage of priests, growing competition from evangelical churches in the Southern Hemisphere, a sexual abuse crisis that undermined the church’s moral authority in the West, and difficulties governing the Vatican itself.
The conclave that resulted in his election followed more than a week of intense discussions among the world’s cardinals about the problems facing the church and their criteria for its next leader.
“The pope’s election is something substantially different from a political election,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, a theologian known for his intellect and his pastoral touch, told reporters at the time.
The role, he noted, is not “the chief executive of a multinational company, but the spiritual head of a community of believers.”
Rachel Donadio was Rome bureau chief from 2008 to 2013.
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