Pope Francis shook up Church with simplicity, raising conservative ire

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis changed the face of the modern papacy more than any predecessor by shunning much of its pomp and privilege, but his attempts to make the Catholic Church more inclusive and less judgmental made him an enemy to conservatives nostalgic for a traditional past.

Francis inherited a deeply divided Church after the resignation in 2013 of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. The conservative-progressive gap became a chasm after Francis, from Argentina, was elected the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

The polarization was fiercest in the United States, where conservative Catholicism often blended with well-financed right-wing politics and media outlets.

For nearly a decade until Benedict’s death in 2022, there were two men wearing white in the Vatican, causing much confusion among the faithful and leading to calls for written norms on the role of retired popes.

The intensity of conservative animosity to the pope was laid bare in January 2023 when it emerged that the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, a towering figure in the conservative movement and a Benedict ally, was the author of an anonymous memo in 2022 that condemned Francis’ papacy as a “catastrophe”.

The memo amounted to a conservative manifesto of the qualities conservatives will want in the next pope.Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936 into a family of Italian immigrants who had settled in Buenos Aires.

He attended a technical high school and worked for a while as a chemical technician at a food laboratory. After he decided to become a priest, he studied at the diocesan seminary and in 1958 entered the Jesuit religious order.

At about that time, when he was 21, he caught pneumonia and had to have the top part of one lung removed because of cysts.While still in the seminary, his vocation was thrown into crisis when he was “dazzled” by a young woman he met at a family wedding. But he stuck to his plans and after studies in Argentina, Spain and Chile, he was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1969, rapidly rising to head the order in Argentina.

That coincided with the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, during which up to 30,000 suspected leftists were kidnapped and killed.

The Vatican has denied accusations by some critics in Argentina that Francis stayed silent during the human rights abuses or that he failed to protect two priests who challenged the dictatorship.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires from 2001-2013, he clashed frequently with the Argentine government, saying it needed to pay more attention to social needs.Francis endeared himself to millions with his simplicity when he spoke minutes after his election as pope on March 13, 2013.

“Brothers and sisters, good evening,” were his first words from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, departing from the traditional salutation “Praised be Jesus Christ!”.

The first pope from Latin America and the first Jesuit to hold the post, Francis was also the first in six centuries to take over the Church after the resignation of a pope.He took the name Francis in honour of Francis of Assisi, the saint associated with peace, concern for the poor, and respect for the environment.

In that first appearance, the new pope shunned the crimson, fur-trimmed “mozzetta”, or cape, and also did not wear a gold cross but kept around his neck the same faded silver-plated one he used as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Gone too were the plush red “shoes of the fisherman” used by his predecessors. He kept the same simple black shoes he always used and wore $20 plastic watches, giving some away so they could be auctioned off for charity.

In his first meeting with journalists three days later, Francis said: “How I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor.”

Inside the tiny city-state, where some cardinals lived like princes in frescoed apartments, Francis renounced the spacious papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace and never moved out of the Vatican hotel where he and the other cardinals who entered the conclave of 2013 were billeted in simple rooms.The Santa Marta residence, a modern building with a common dining room, became the nerve centre of the more than 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church.