Pope Francis funeral: world leaders to join thousands of mourners for ceremony – latest updates | Pope Francis

Peter Stanford

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires. His father Mario’s parents had travelled to Argentina in 1929 from Portacomaro in Piedmont, northern Italy, wanting to escape a country swept up with the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Mario married Regina Sivori in 1935. The following year, Jorge, the oldest of their five children, was born.

The family spoke Spanish at their single-storey home, 531 Calle Membrillar, in Flores, but with his grandparents – who lived just round the corner in the Almagro neighbourhood of Buenos Aires – the young Jorge learned Italian, or the Piedmontese dialect of their upbringing. His father worked for an accounting firm and, while the family was not poor, money was always tight. At school, Jorge excelled in chemistry, though he later insisted he was never top of the class. Outside it, he liked football (following a local team, San Lorenzo), tango and girls. There was even a girlfriend, Amalia Damonte.

Aged 17, he attended mass in his local church of San José de Flores and was so moved by the sermon of a visiting priest, Enrique Pozzoli, that he sought him out in the confessional. In the course of their exchange, he recalled later, he discovered his religious vocation. His mother was not pleased, he recalled. “She experienced it as a plundering.”

He fell seriously ill at 21 with pneumonia and doctors feared for his life. Three cysts were found on his right lung and part of it was removed in a brutal operation. The brush with death strengthened his determination to become a priest and he entered a Jesuit seminary soon afterwards. Mother and son were finally reconciled in December 1969 when he was ordained after 12 years’ training.

By that stage, Bergoglio was 33 and had gained a philosophy degree at the Catholic University of Buenos Aires. He taught for a while – philosophy and literature – before in 1973 he was elected as the youngest-ever provincial of Jesuits in Argentina. It turned out to be a poisoned chalice.

His six years in charge overlapped with the military junta that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983, during which period between 15,000 and 30,000 Argentinians “disappeared” or were killed. Like the country’s Catholic church, the Jesuits were divided in how to react to events. Both contained progressive elements opposed to the dictatorship and more conservative ones, including prominent military chaplains privy to human rights abuses.

You can read more about the life of Pope Francis here: