Alejandro Bermudez - Pope Francis - Our Brother, Our Friend: Personal Recollections About the Man who Became Pope

Pope Francis:
Our Brother, Our Friend

as revealed in interviews
edited and translated by

Alejandro Bermudez

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Cover art:
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio outside San Cayetano Church
in Buenos Aires, Friday August 7, 2009
Associated Press photo / Natacha Pisarenko. AP Images

Cover design by John Herreid

2013 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-58617-872-7
Library of Congress Control Number 2013936877
Printed in the United States of America

(eighty-eight years old and the third oldest member of the Argentinean Jesuit province)

(fifty years old, whose spiritual adviser was Father Bergoglio)

(fifty years, old, student of Father Bergoglio; now superior of the Residencia Jesuita community in Cordoba)

(ninety-two years old, professor emeritus of the Colegio Maximo San Jos)

(sixty years old and a Jesuit since 1977, friend of Pope Francis and bookbinder in Buenos Aires; his twin brother is also a Jesuit brother)

(seventy-eight years old, professor of Father Bergoglio and professor of theology in the Colegio Mximo San Jos in San Miguel)

(sixty-one years old, disciple of Father Bergoglio and bishop of Azul, Argentina)

(eighty-one years old, professor of Jorge Mario Bergoglio)

(eighty-five years old, Jesuit since 1944, professor of Jorge Mario Bergoglio)

(professor of biblical studies at the Colegio Maximo San Jose, student of Father Bergoglio)

(dean of the Social Sciences Department at the Universidad del Salvador, friend of Pope Francis)

(Italian journalist and co-author of the popes biographical book El Jesuita )

(sixty-two years old, a beggar who is frequently around the cathedral in Buenos Aires)

(friend of Pope Francis and co-author of the book On Heaven and Earth )

(fifty years old, priest of the slums, friend of Pope Francis)

(layman, sixty-nine years old, in charge of San Lorenzo de Almagro Soccer Clubs chapel)

(pro-life and pro-family senator who continually consulted with Cardinal Bergoglio)

(professor of the Universidad del Salvador and friend of Pope Francis)

(eighty-seven years old, director of the Agencia Informativa Catlica Argentina [AICA] for fifty-seven years; collaborator of Cardinal Bergoglio)

(journalist and director of the Catholic magazine Criterio since 1996; he interviewed the then Archbishop Bergoglio several times)

The first Jesuits arrived in what is now Argentina from Peru in November 1585 and settled in the city of Cordoba, where they have had a very important presence to this day. There they created the first university in the country and provided the human and spiritual force necessary to evangelize the surrounding areas, which included the famous Reducciones of Paraguay, immortalized in the movie The Mission .

Their presence in Buenos Aires, todays cosmopolitan capital of Argentina, was not significant until the Society returned to Argentina on August 9, 1863, following their suppression and subsequent restoration. In the midst of the instability and violent political history of the country, the Jesuits managed to establish themselves firmly in Buenos Aires, and in 1938 the Argentinean Province was born with 324 Jesuits, separated from Chile.

The community of San Miguel, on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires, then became the Colegio Mximo de San Jos, the formation center for the Jesuit vocations coming from Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Hundreds of Jesuits, arriving to be formed as priests or brothers, have traveled through the large grove that leads to the Colegio Mximos front door. In 1958, a thin young man, a technician in chemistry, the son of an immigrant from Piedmont, in northern Italy, traveled through that same grove. His name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and neither he nor his peers imagined that this young man would one day become the first Jesuit pope and the first pope from America.

Pope Francis, with his simple style and his direct manner of preaching, with its touch of humor, is a living image of his country, Argentina. Yet his spirituality clearly reflects that of Saint Ignatius, who has inspired and nourished him during mostand the most decisivepart of his life.

The young Bergoglio entered the diocesan seminary of Buenos Aires when it was still run by the Jesuits, and, after one year, he discovered in his professors of formation the path to which he was being called: that of the Society of Jesus.

On March 11, 1958, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus. He completed his humanities studies in Chile, and in 1963 he went back to Argentina. He graduated with a degree in philosophy from the Colegio Maximo in San Miguel.

Between 1964 and 1965, he was professor of literature and psychology at the La Inmaculada school in Santa Fe and in 1966 taught the same subjects at the school of El Salvador in Buenos Aires, which would later evolve into a Catholic university.

From 1967 to 1970, he studied theology at the Colegio Mximo.

He was ordained a priest on December 13, 1969, and continued his formation in Spain between 1970 and 1971. On April 22, 1973, he made his perpetual profession as a Jesuit. Again in Argentina, he was master of novices at the Novitiate of San Ignacio as well as consultant for the province for the Society of Jesus and vice rector of the Colegio Maximo.

On July 13, 1973, he was elected the youngest provincial of the Jesuits, a position that he held in Argentina until the end of 1979. Between 1980 and 1986, he became the rector of the Colegio Mximo San Jos and was also a pastor in San Miguel.

In March 1986, he traveled to Germany to do his doctoral thesis on Romano Guardini, which he never finished. In 1987, his superiors sent him to the school of El Salvador in Buenos Aires and, in 1991, to the Jesuit residence of the Society of Jesus in Crdoba, where he served as a professor, spiritual director, and confessor.

In 1992 he was named auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He was ordained a bishop by Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, then archbishop of Buenos Aires, on June 27. In June 1997, he was named coadjutor archbishop, and, on February 28, 1998, he took possession of the archdiocesethe primatial see of Argentina.

The relationship of the current Pope Francis with his community was not always easy. Some moments of his life as a Jesuit, especially his term of office as provincial and the reason for his transfer to Cordoba, are interpreted in diverse ways by the brothers of his congregation. Here we have collected the testimonies of ten Argentinean Jesuits who lived close to Father Bergoglio, some as professors, others as peers, and others as his disciples. When they refer to the Jesuits in these interviews, they will often use the Society.

Yet, the personality of the current pope would remain incomplete if it were not enriched with the testimony of other people, from the important politician to the beggar and from the rabbi to the priest working in the slums of Buenos Aires.

The interviews were made possible by the meticulous work of my colleague and friend Walter Sanchez Silva, news editor for the agency ACI Prensa in Lima, Peru, and they were conducted one month after the election of Pope Francis. The interviews vary in length and depth, depending upon the disposition of the person interviewed. Different interviewees naturally gravitated to different issues.

Because these are interviewsfirst-person accountsthere may be occasional differences in the details or opinions these individuals relate about events that occurred involving Pope Francis, but they essentially transmit a mosaic that reveals little-known aspects of the pontiffs personality, of his interior world, his human abilities, his work habits, his devotions, his concerns, and his friendships. And, thus, they open a fascinating door to a better understanding of the man whom the Holy Spirit has elected to conduct the Church at this time.