After the resignation of Benedict XVI to the papal office, Francisco was chosen as the new Pope on March 13, 2013, whose real name is Jorge Mario Bergolio and became the first Latin American Pope and the first Jesuit in the history of the church to be the first of the popes to choose the name of Francisco.
He was born in Argentina, Buenos Aires in 1936, in a family of modest origin.
His father was a railway employee, Mario Bergoglio, and his housewife mother, Regina María Sívori. In total they were eight siblings, of which 4 are girls and another 4 are boys.
During his childhood he went to the Wilfrid Barón School of the Holy Angels, when he went to high school he specialized in industry and obtained the title of chemical technician.
Later he went to university, where he graduated in Philosophy. During his youth he worked as a disco doorman and in a florist shop to get some money to pay for his studies.
At age 21, he decided to become a priest and entered the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto, where he was consecrated as such on December 13, 1969. Prior to his appointment, he worked as a professor of Literature and Psychology in several secondary schools in Argentina, and later of Theology.
Since then he made a long career within the order and finally in 1992 he was appointed Bishop. In 1998 he received the position of archbishop and in 2001 Pope John Paul II appointed him cardinal.
The 8 curious facts
1 Far away from the ‘society’
The first curiosity about the pontiff is that he does not watch television, nor does he surf the Internet, although he decided to open his own Instagram account, getting a million followers in less than a day and only read a period, so he confessed in an interview with an Argentine newspaper: “I only read one newspaper, La Repubblica, which is a newspaper for the middle sectors, I do it in the morning and it doesn’t take me more than 10 minutes to look through it. He says it is a promise he made to Our Lady of Mount Carmel on the night of July 15, 1990.
2 A complicated operation
When he was 20 years old, part of the lung was removed after undergoing an operation, and although the disease did not affect his quality of life, it limited his breathing capacity.
3.Multilingual
He is fluent in several languages, including German, Latin, Spanish and Italian. He also understands other Portuguese, English and even Ukrainian languages. He also knows Piedmontese, an Italian dialect, since his father emigrated to Argentina from the Italian region of Piedmont.
4.Your residence
He is the first Pope since Pius X who lives outside the papal apartments. And it is that when Jorge Mario Bergolio was named Pope in March of 2013 he decided that he would not reside in the apostolic palace but would live in the Vatican, in a guesthouse where he could receive people and also hold meetings.
5 He had a girlfriend
Although it seems incredible the current Pope did fall in love and was at the age of 12, a girl named Amalia, in fact said: “If I do not marry you, I become a cure,” explained the childhood friend of the Pope Francisco to the newspaper El Mundo.
He also added that it was something innocent of children: “I have nothing to hide, if it was such a childish thing and so clean, I think he offered me a marriage because he wanted to follow the example of his house and start a family”.
And it is that Amalia only has words of flattery towards the one that was its pretender long ago: “It was always a person that being child was big, mature, of low profile, of ‘you do not believe it'”.
6 Great soccer fan
Being a Pope does not prevent him from being a great soccer fan, a passion he inherited from his father, since he was a great follower of the San Lorenzo de Almagro Athletic Club, which besides having his shirts, has his membership card.
But not only football is one of his favorite sports, but basketball is also, and in fact the Pope when he was young used to practice this sport, so many people also give him basketball jerseys.
7 Delivered to the most disadvantaged
On Good Friday in 2001, when he was still archbishop of Buenos Aires, he visited the Muñiz hospital to celebrate a mass and wash the feet of 12 AIDS patients. This mass was addressed to patients, doctors, volunteers and relatives of the same.
8 Triple nationality
Pope Francis has the nationality of three countries, that is, he is a legal citizen of three corners of the world. First, Argentina, which was where he grew and lived for a long time.
He is also an Italian citizen, since we remember that his father was from a small region of Italy, but that he emigrated to Argentina, and finally from the Vatican since it is a sovereign entity.
