It was a wide-open field, with more than a dozen cardinals discussed as frontrunners. Benedict’s resignation had caught the red hats by as much surprise as the lay public. Those who had the ambition to be Pope had not had the opportunity to politick that often arises in the final weeks of a Pope’s terminal illness. Everyone was running a short race from the same starting line.
Buenos Aires’s cardinal, Jorge Bergoglio, who had finished second eight years earlier to Benedict, did not seem to be a contender this time. The wide consensus was that although Latin America had more Catholics than anywhere else, it was unlikely that the College of Cardinals would select their next leader from there. Only nineteen of the 117 cardinals were Latin American, and it was not even certain that they would vote as a bloc geographically.1 The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen, who provided sober commentary as on-air CNN consultant, wrote a story about Bergoglio’s second-place finish in 2005. Allen was in the know as much as any Italian Vaticanologist, with excellent Curial sources. His view was given wide credence. In summarizing Bergoglio’s chances, Allen wrote that while he “at least merits a look” it was unlikely that he would emerge as Pope.
Fifty of the cardinals from the last conclave were voting again. Allen noted, “They may be skeptical that the results would be any different this time around.” Although Allen set forth a long list of reasons why Bergoglio might attract some votes, in the end, he said, “there are compelling reasons to believe that Bergoglio’s window of opportunity to be pope has already closed.” To the extent exhaustion and age caused Benedict to resign, it was yet another strike against an older candidate like Bergoglio, who would be only two years younger than Benedict when he was selected. According to Allen, there was “the standard ambivalence about Jesuits in high offices,” and the fact he had never worked inside the Vatican. The final factor working against the Buenos Aires cardinal was that “doubts that circulated about Bergoglio’s toughness eight years ago may arguably be even more damaging now, given that the ability to govern, and to take control of the Vatican bureaucracy, seems to figure even more prominently on many cardinals’ wish lists this time . . . there may be concerns about his capacity to take the place in hand.”2
Bergoglio may have agreed with Allen’s assessment. After he finished second to Ratzinger in the conclave, he returned to Buenos Aires and told colleagues he looked forward to retirement. An old-age home for clerics in Las Flores, a small town just outside Buenos Aires where he was born, was where he intended to move after he stepped down. In 2010 he said, “I’m starting to consider the fact that I have to leave everything behind.” He had handed his resignation letter to the Pope when he turned seventy-five in 2011, but Benedict had done nothing about it.3
Few of the “inside shortlists” included Bergoglio. The names that did get bandied about the most included two American cardinals, New York’s glad-handing populist Timothy Dolan and his polar opposite, Boston’s unassuming Sean O’Malley. The Italians seemed to be split between two powerful cardinals, Milan’s Angelo Scola—who it was said had been John Paul II’s personal selection to replace him—and Genoa’s Angelo Bagnasco, who had benefited from his recent condemnation of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s poor morals. There was, as in every lead-up to each conclave since the 1960s, speculation about whether the church was ready for its first black Pope. Ladbrokes and Paddy Power had Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson as the frontrunner at 5 to 2. Right behind was Canada’s Marc Ouellet at 3 to 1, and Nigeria’s Francis Arinze was 4 to 1. The odds for the others covered a wide range, from Timothy Dolan’s 25 to 1 to the semiretired eighty-year-old Cormac Murphy O’Connor, who was a long shot at 150 to 1.4 Bergoglio was not on the list.
On Tuesday, March 12, the 115 voting cardinals met in the Sistine Chapel. They did not get under way until the afternoon, and managed only one vote. It resulted in black smoke. No one had gotten the support of two thirds of all cardinals. News reports that night said Italy’s Angelo Scola and Brazil’s Odilo Scherer were in a tight race. Scola was a solid favorite of many Italian cardinals who wanted the Papacy back after thirty-five years under a Pole and then a German. Scola’s problem was that reformers feared he was too much a Vatican insider, while traditionalists thought he would embark on too radical a redo of the Curia. In fact, he had garnered fewer votes on the first round than most cardinals expected, ending in a virtual tie with Canada’s Marc Ouellet. Bergoglio surprised everyone as a strong third.5
On the second day, Scola’s support started peeling away.6 The cardinals agreed that it would be a good sign to the faithful if they showed unity by settling on someone quickly. By the third ballot it was a two-person race between Ouellet and Bergoglio. On the fourth ballot Bergoglio moved ahead, and Ouellet threw his support to him (there was speculation later that the two had struck a deal by which Ouellet would become Secretary of State; in fact he received no appointment from the new Pope).7
So it took one more vote, the fifth ballot, to put Bergoglio over the top, making him the first non-European Pontiff since a Syrian, Gregory III, 1,300 years earlier.
“It was very moving as the names were sounding out,” Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady recounted later to reporters. “Bergoglio, Bergoglio, and suddenly the magic number of 77 was reached. The cardinals erupted into applause. “I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house,” said New York’s Timothy Dolan.8
Brazil’s Claudio Hummes was sitting next to Bergoglio. He leaned over, embraced his Argentine friend, and kissed him on the forehead.
“Don’t forget the poor,” Hummes said.
“And that struck me . . . the poor,” Bergoglio later recalled. “Immediately I thought of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis was a man of peace, a man of poverty, a man who loved and protected creation. How I would love a Church that is poor and for the poor.” When he was asked for his new name, he did not hesitate with Francis.9
When word filtered out the news wires carried headlines such as “unexpected choice” and “surprise election.”10 Some of the stories rehashed allegations from the 2005 conclave. “Already Francis’s brief papacy has been touched by controversy.” They were stale charges that he was somehow complicit in the kidnapping by the Argentine military junta of two leftist Jesuits. A troubling variation of this story was that in the mode of Pius XII and the Holocaust, he had remained silent during the junta’s human rights abuses.11
The Vatican dismissed the accusations the following day as baseless and libelous. Lombardi went so far as to suggest the charges were a smear by a “left-wing, anti-clerical” plot.
Bergoglio seemed unfazed by the controversy. He had heard it before. Having run a diocese in a major urban center—with a thriving media and robust tabloids—he was accustomed to sometimes rough and tumble public treatment. While ordinary Catholics did not yet know what to make of him, inside the walls of the Vatican—even during his first week—Francis was a sharp contrast to the dour Benedict. He smiled, laughed, went out of his way to talk to even the lowliest workers, cracked jokes, and seemed genuinely interested in the lives of those he met.
Born in 1936—the eldest of five children—in Buenos Aires to Italian immigrants (his father was a railroad worker and his mother a homemaker), Bergoglio planned to be a chemist, but at twenty-one decided instead he wanted to be a Jesuit. He was motivated by a desire to serve the poor, something he did not think he could do as well in private business.12 Among other subjects he taught philosophy and psychology, and for six years starting in 1973 he was Argentina’s Jesuit provincial before becoming the rector of the seminary from which he had graduated.13 Bergoglio was never swept up in the progressive liberation theology that flourished among many of his contemporaries. No group was more radicalized throughout Latin America than the Jesuits. But the limit of his own activism was to mix into his faith a theme of strong social justice for the underprivileged.
Twelve years later, 1992, he was named Buenos Aires’s auxiliary bishop. When Cardinal Antonio Quarracino died of a heart attack in 1998, Bergoglio took his place. And John Paul gave him the red hat three years later. He had by this time earned a deserved reputation as an unwavering traditionalist on church dogma, not only in condemning homosexuality, same sex marriage, and abortion, but even giving a spirited defense of no contraception.14 (In 2010, Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, admonished him for his contention that gay adoption was a form of discrimination against children.)
What did surprise the 13.5 million Catholics in Buenos Aires was the reception Francis received at the Vatican. He had been a likable enough cardinal in Argentina but there was no indication that he would morph into such a popular Pope on the world stage. Francis benefited from the contrast to the besieged Benedict. But it was far more. He was a populist who knew how to play to the crowd. On the day he was elected, at his first appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s, he refused to wear the traditional ermine-trimmed red cape and silk slippers, nor would he carry the jewel-encrusted gold cross. He shunned the grand Papal living quarters in the Apostolic Palace and instead moved into a simple apartment at Casa Santa Marta, the city-state’s modest guesthouse. He told Monsignor Georg Gänswein, who remained as his Papal Secretary, to put away all the ornate vestments, instead donning only the simplest white cassock and skull cap. The jeweled triple tiara was put in storage. There would be no trappings of an imperial Papacy so long as he was in charge.15
If Benedict seemed not only burdened but at times even defeated by the modern world, Francis showed he was a master of twenty-first-century tools. And he demonstrated an innate talent at managing his own public image. He hugged a man with a terribly deformed face at St. Peter’s; washed the feet of female convicts; and celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday by inviting a homeless man to breakfast in his private apartment. He seemed an ordinary man, giving friends a lift in his car and even taking selfies with babies and visitors at St. Peter’s Square. His first trip outside of Rome was to meet the impoverished “boat people” of the Italian island of Lampedusa. Images of him there praying with migrants went viral. He sent out his own tweets. A small plenary indulgence was offered for those who followed him on Twitter. Another indulgence was provided to Catholics who attended World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, where he gave a talk to a million people. Francis surprised even his aides by telephoning at random some of those who had written him letters (four nuns retold dozens of reporters how startled they were to return to their convent and have a New Year’s message from the Pope on their answering machine). The unpredictability that so endeared him to the faithful at times unnerved his personal staff, who were accustomed under Benedict to strictly timed schedules from which no variation was permitted.16
But it was more than symbolism that so endeared him to both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. During spur-of-the-moment press conferences, or at times during a prepared speech when he tossed away the paper and spoke extemporaneously, the self-effacing Pontiff invariably said something that sounded tolerant and different. About gays, “If a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, who am I to judge?” Gays, he said, “feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this.” What about women who consider abortion because they were raped? “Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?”17 On the divisive question of whether divorced and remarried worshippers can again take the sacraments, he held out hope for reform, saying that Communion was “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”18 He told the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica that many Catholics and social conservatives were obsessed “only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods” and that instead they should focus on “a new balance . . . [a] pastoral ministry.”19
In each of these instances Francis’s words were carefully crafted. He never promised to make any substantive reforms or alter long-established doctrine, nor did he ever commit to radically change course from the traditional positions he championed for decades in Argentina. But the lay public was unaccustomed to a Pope talking frankly—much less so empathetically—on issues that under previous Pontiffs had been matters on which Catholics only got lectures and rules to follow.
Francis’s openness captured people’s imaginations. And the notable difference in style instilled in many a belief that a change in substance was imminent. In some ways, he became a Rorschach test. People saw in him what they wanted in a Pope. On the online world, there were thousands of blogs predicting what the church would look like in a few years under a Francis Papacy. Most were no more than wish lists by the bloggers who created them, but they reflected the promise that millions had invested in Francis. Gays believed he might soften his predecessor’s condemnation of homosexuality as an “objective disorder” and open the door to same sex marriage. Women were convinced that Francis would be the first Pontiff to loosen absolute bans on contraception for the poor and the prohibition of abortion in cases of rape and incest. Some predicted that he would break tradition and consider women as priests. Every special interest group had something online dedicated to the new Pope. He would end celibacy for priests. Sex abusers would be tossed out of the priesthood and turned over to civil authorities. Catholicism would focus on lifting the poor and chastising the rich.
“I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,” he wrote not long after assuming the Papacy.20
Little wonder the Pontiff dubbed “The People’s Pope” was “Man of the Year” for Time (“The septuagenarian superstar is poised to transform a place that measures change by the century”) as well as The Advocate, a leading LGBT magazine (“a stark change in rhetoric from his two predecessors”).21 Rolling Stone put him on its cover—the first time for a Pope—and titled their profile “The Times They Are A-Changing.”22 “Pope Francis Is a Liberal,” gushed the online magazine Slate.23 A monitor of web usage concluded that he was the most talked-about person on the Internet in 2013.24 Francis’s Twitter account, @Pontifex, had more than four million followers in ten languages. The entire Francis package was “stunning,” agreed most Vaticanologists.25
Critically important for the church, Francis reenergized the faith for tens of millions of young Catholics who had given up hope that the clerics in Rome might ever be relevant in their lives. Priests in dozens of countries reported that Mass attendance soared. Volunteers for Catholic relief and charities zoomed. Contributions for Peter’s Pence jumped.26
The best politicians realize there is a natural charisma, a chemistry of sorts, that allows a handful of them to connect with people in a way about which most can only dream. Despite shortcomings on promises and a failure to meet expectations, these men and women still inspire confidence and get high favorability ratings in opinion polls long after people would have soured on less magnetic personalities. Francis appeared to fall into this select group. Throughout his first year as Pope, people ignored what he did or said that they did not like.
Six months into his Papacy, in September, he gave a broad-ranging interview to America, a prominent Catholic magazine, in which he pedaled back on some of his most popular impromptu remarks. “On issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods . . . the teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”27 That same month in a talk to Catholic gynecologists he issued as harsh a condemnation of abortion as anything Benedict or John Paul ever said: “In a decisive and unhesitating ‘yes’ to life” he said that abortion was a product of “a widespread mentality of profit, the ‘throwaway culture,’ which has today enslaved the hearts of so many.”28 He later tweeted support for pro-life demonstrations, reminding Catholics that life “begins in the womb,” and declaring, “This is not something subject to alleged reforms or ‘modernizations.’ It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.”29
He declined, when asked, to soften what he had said in 2009 when as a cardinal he opposed a gay marriage bill pending before Argentine legislators: “Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”30
In July 2013, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child had sent Francis a request for “detailed information” on the investigations and results of the Vatican’s sex abuse cases. The U.N. wanted transparency on previous offenders, especially so that any who were defrocked under Benedict might not return to civilian society as pedophiles without anyone the wiser. The Holy See had in 1994 ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a legally binding instrument that committed it to protecting children.31 But in nineteen years, the Vatican had in 2012 only submitted a single summary, lacking any details. The U.N. thought that under Francis the church might be more forthcoming. But in November, the Vatican refused to provide the CRC the names or details it had gathered over the years about clerical sexual pedophiles.32
“It is not the practice of the Holy See to disclose information on the religious discipline of members of the clergy or religious according to canon law.” (The next January, 2014, at a U.N. hearing in Geneva, Vatican representatives sat in silence as CRC delegates publicly castigated the church for its refusal to cooperate: “The Holy See has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests,” charged a CRC attorney. The CRC scolded the Vatican again in May, urging the church to “take effective measures.” In September, the Vatican shot back, criticizing the CRC for a “grave misunderstanding” of the church’s sovereignty.)33
Those who know the Pope best do not think there is any contradiction between the progressive and reactionary Francis. Boston’s likable Cardinal Sean O’Malley, and the Pope’s closest American confidant, cautioned a reporter from The Boston Globe that Francis had softened the church’s tone but said, “I don’t see the Pope as changing doctrine.”34,I
And except for a few on the American political right—Rush Limbaugh condemned Francis’s take on capitalism as “pure Marxism”—millions who wanted change inside the Vatican were not bothered. His socially liberal supporters seemingly tuned out any part of his message about which they did not agree, and focused instead on common ground, especially his unwavering commitment to the poor.36 Francis had sold them that he was the real deal when it came to reform and compassion and conservative statements that echoed his predecessors did nothing to dent his extraordinary appeal. At the end of 2013, after he had pulled back on many of the critical social issues, a slew of public opinion polls confirmed that all the excitement and mostly laudatory media coverage had made Francis one of the most well liked religious figures of the modern era. Ninety-two percent of U.S. Catholics approved of how he ran the church, reported ABC. A similar number in a CNN poll showed his “approval rating [is] sky high”; even 75 percent of non-Catholics liked him.37 A remarkable 85 percent thought Francis was neither too liberal nor too conservative and that he was the first Pope to be integrated with the modern world. London’s Express tabloid asked, “Could Pope Francis be the most popular ever?”38
No wonder church veterans thought Francis was heaven sent. They remembered all too well that a similar poll taken in 2003, eighteen months before the end of John Paul’s tenure, revealed that more than half of U.S. Catholics thought the Pontiff was out of touch with their lives and the church had less meaning and influence for them than ever.39
The remarkable change in the fortunes of the Vatican during the nine months of Francis’s 2013 Papacy was best summed up by Kay Campbell, an American religion reporter: “In the space of my lifetime, the Catholic Church has gone from pariah to rock star.”40
I. Over time, many traditionalists changed their opinion and concluded that Francis was meddling in long-established doctrines of faith. At an October 2014 synod on the modern family, there was firm pushback from conservative bishops over a Francis-favored draft that proposed liberalizing rules about nonmarital relationships and the right of remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments. Ross Douthat, a New York Times conservative Catholic columnist, suggested that if Francis pushed too radical an agenda too quickly, it could lead to “a real schism.”35