Some links for background on Pope Francis


Pope Francis I is from Buenos Aires, Argentina and is the first Jesuit Pope in history. He is 76 and was ordained in 1969. He obtained a doctorate in Germany. As Cardinal he lived in a simple apartment and travelled by public transport. He was Ordinary for the Eastern Rite faithful. Along with his simple and ascetical lifestyle, he has been a vocal opponent of abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage while promoting social justice. (I think the Tablet will have a job deciphering this.) His style has something in common with St Charles Borromeo.

There will be much comment in the next few weeks so I will leave it at that for now and hope to learn much from the Holy Father himself and from others. For the moment leave you with a few links:

Here is the basic Vatican biography

Taylor Marshall has quickly posted Ten Facts about Pope Francis

John Allen in his article (already re-titled) in a wide-ranging series of "men who could be Pope" very much hedged his bets, but there is some interesting information.

An amazingly rapid update of Wikipedia already has a reasonably useful article on Pope Francis I, which will presumably be further updated over the next few days.

More quick links via Big Pulpit.

(The BBC has a mediocre piece of blurb with a picture of him as a Cardinal looking grumpy but I won't link to that.)

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