As Bergoglio recalled, “At mid-morning on May 27, 1997, Calabresi [papal nuncio to Argentina] called and asked me to lunch with him. We were drinking coffee, and I was all set to thank him for the meal and take my leave when I noticed that a cake and a bottle of champagne had been brought in. I thought it must be his birthday, and I was just about to offer my best wishes. But the surprise came when I asked him about it. ‘No, it’s not my birthday,’ he replied, grinning broadly. ‘It so happens that you are the new coadjutor bishop of Buenos Aires.’” At seventy-three, Cardinal Quarracino’s health was failing. He was keen to ensure that were he to die in office, Bergoglio, as coadjutor, would automatically succeed him as archbishop and assume responsibility for Argentina’s principal diocese and the 3.5 million Catholics living in central Buenos Aires. Quarracino had been right to put his house in order, for a little over eight months later, on February 28, 1998, he died from complications resulting from an intestinal blockage. In his place, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now sixty-one years old, was appointed archbishop of Buenos Aires.
FROM BLACK TO RED
The dizzying speed of Bergoglio’s eclipse as leader of the Argentine Jesuits followed by his near-stratospheric rise from priest to archbishop must surely have left not just his mind blank but his head spinning. In just six years, he had gone from a kind of exile to become the leader of the Catholic Church in Argentina. He was barely afforded much time to process the change—three days, in fact, during which he withdrew from the maelstrom of funeral preparations for his predecessor and official inductions to a silent retreat, where he could grieve the loss of his friend and contemplate the path down which he must now tread.
After he returned, Bergoglio remained as resolved as ever to eschew the decadence and ostentation that came hand in hand with the upper echelons of the Catholic Church, committing himself instead to a life of humility and simplicity, helping the poor just as Saint Ignatius of Loyola had directed more than five hundred years earlier.
Bergoglio’s way of doing things was somewhat puzzling for the staff attempting to follow the traditional protocol of transition for a new archbishop. When the diocesan tailors returned their quote for his official clothing, Bergoglio balked at the price and proposed that they save the money and simply alter Quarracino’s cassocks to fit his slenderer frame. As before, he declined the official archbishop’s residence, located near the Presidential Palace, in the exclusive suburb of Olivos, preferring to live in a spartan single bedroom in the curia building next to the cathedral in the Plaza de Mayo. Gone was the need for limousines and chauffeurs as Bergoglio continued to walk the streets and ride the subway and buses of Buenos Aires. Nor were the grand offices of the archbishop required; all he wanted was a simple room to work in, with space for his books and a couple of chairs for guests.
His unique style was a revelation. The public and the media largely embraced and celebrated this new, more pastoral approach to governance. The politicians—in particular President Carlos Menem, who, having been elected in 1989, was entering his last year in office and was keen to garner support from the church to amend the constitution to allow him to serve a third term—had reservations. Bergoglio made it clear he was not afraid to speak plainly and critically of the government’s failings and of its need to address the issues facing society as a whole. By 1998, Argentina was teetering on the brink of another great depression, the effects of which had already been felt in the poorest and most marginalized communities, where Bergoglio spent much of his time.
During previous periods of instability, the church’s message had been overshadowed by infighting and partisan politics—for which Bergoglio held himself accountable. Throughout his time as archbishop, he displayed an ardent determination to rise above such temptations and to preserve the sacred and fundamental pastoral message he had learned as a young priest. Inclusivity was key, and Bergoglio drew heavily on his Jesuit training when implementing changes in the diocese.
A little over a month after his appointment as archbishop, Bergoglio delegated the traditional mass of Maundy Thursday in Holy Week, during which the archbishop would wash the feet of twelve men, representing the twelve apostles, in the city’s cathedral, to his auxiliary bishop so that he could celebrate his own mass at the Muñiz Hospital for Infectious Diseases. Here, in a ceremony marking Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples, Bergoglio washed and kissed the feet of twelve patients suffering from AIDS. Father Andrés Tello, the hospital chaplain, recalled, “When he arrived, I explained that while the Gospel speaks of twelve male apostles, here in the hospital we had men, women, transvestites. He told me: ‘Whom you choose, I will wash their feet.’ The Mass was very emotional, everyone was crying, he gave communion to everyone.… He always talked about existential peripheries. He wanted to go to a place of great pain and the hospital is that.” Throughout his fifteen years as archbishop it became a tradition that every Maundy Thursday Bergoglio would wash and kiss the feet of the marginalized in hospitals, prisons, rehab centers, slums, and nursing homes across Buenos Aires.
Bergoglio’s reforms were not limited to the day-to-day pastoral affairs and the church’s preferential focus on the poor. When he inherited the diocese, it became clear that it was not just the country’s finances that were in chaos. Quarracino’s death revealed inappropriately close ties between the church, its donors, and the government, which resulted in a complex mess of loans, shoddy accounts, and back-channel bribes. In an attempt to untangle the knots, Bergoglio engaged an external accountancy firm to conduct a thorough audit, which revealed that the archdiocese “regularly ignored both canon law and the Argentine bishops’ own guidelines for monitoring and authorizing payments.” A complete overhaul of practices was instigated by the new archbishop, but not before the diocese was raided by police in connection with a questionable ten-million-dollar loan. The scandal was later resolved and according to Ivereigh, “the auditor’s report commissioned by Bergoglio was so thorough that it left no questions hanging, and the archbishop’s reputation was, if anything, enhanced by his handling of the affair.”
While domestic in nature, Bergoglio’s actions during his three-year tenure as archbishop of Buenos Aires garnered a chorus of praise that not only was heard throughout Argentina but also traveled all the way to the Vatican. So it was that on February 21, 2001, Bergoglio stepped forward before Pope John Paul II and knelt at his feet. Gone was his simple black priest’s attire; he was now dressed in the scarlet choir dress reserved only for cardinals—hand-me-downs from the late Quarracino, naturally. That was the day he was one of forty-two new cardinal appointees. The frail eighty-year-old John Paul, who was still yet to officially acknowledge that he had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for the last ten years, squinted in the bright winter sunshine as he leaned down and placed the red biretta on Bergoglio’s head before saying, “[This is] scarlet as a sign of the dignity of the cardinalate, signifying your readiness to act with courage, even to the shedding of your blood, for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and tranquility of the people of God and for the freedom and growth of the Holy Roman Church.”
After the pope kissed his newly appointed cardinal on each cheek and Bergoglio kissed the papal hand in return, John Paul smiled and in a warm, fatherly gesture, patted the slightly stunned-looking Argentinian twice on the shoulder. “You can breathe now!” seems to have been the inference. The crowds cheered and clapped for Cardinal Bergoglio, but unlike with other new cardinals, there was no special eruption of joy for him. Upon hearing that excited people had been planning trips to Rome to attend the celebrations, Bergoglio requested that they save the money they would have spent on the journey and, instead, donate it to the poor.
When the open-air ceremony in St. Peter’s Square ended, Bergoglio walked through the streets to his accommodation, soaking up the vibrant atmosphere of the city. Back at the humble priests’ lodgings, where he would continue to stay whenever he visited Rome, he packed his small, battered suitcase, changed back
into his familiar black priest’s outfit—it was a remarkable achievement for the Vatican to get him out of it for a whole day—collected his passport, and returned home to Buenos Aires … in economy class, of course.
FIRST STEPS ON THE ROAD TO ROME
Despite his best efforts, life for the sixty-three-year-old cardinal had inevitably to change now that curial responsibilities had elbowed their way into his annual schedule. In the first year alone, he visited Rome a further two times: once in May for the largest “extraordinary consistory” in the church’s history—a meeting considered by many to be a preconclave opportunity for possible successors, from among John Paul’s 115 cardinals, to display their credentials—to discuss what the pope described as “practical suggestions for the Church’s mission of evangelization at the dawn of the new millennium”; then again in October, when, at the last minute, Bergoglio was appointed relator general to the Synod of Bishops—literally responsible for relating the objectives of the meeting and summarizing the speeches to the bishops to aid them when drafting proposals and conclusions of the conference, which were then presented to the pope, who was also in attendance—in place of Cardinal Edward Egan, Archbishop of New York, who was presiding over an interfaith memorial service in the recently devastated city following the terrorist attacks on September 11.
The appointment of a relatively unknown figure to this role was testament to John Paul’s faith in Bergoglio and thrust him to the heights of the church hierarchy. No longer able to wear what Austen Ivereigh described as “his customary cloak of invisibility,” which enabled him to move around Rome unnoticed, he would have known that a significant amount rode on his performance during the synod and the subsequent postspeech press conference held at the Vatican. And even though his thoughts were distracted by the economic and political tumult currently engulfing his own country—the government was about to be ousted, the entire banking system was on the brink of collapse, and the International Monetary Fund was about to withdraw funds to refinance the national debt—he delivered a speech of such commanding distinction that people at once began considering him as a possible contender for the Chair of St. Peter; he also revealed some flashes of his future when he said:
Nowadays the war of the powerful against the weak has opened a gap between rich and the poor. The poor are legion. Before an unjust economic system with very strong structural mismatches, the situation of the marginalised is worse. Today there is hunger. The poor, the young and the refugees are victims of this “new civilization.” … The Bishop must never tire of preaching the social doctrine which comes from the Gospel and which the Church has made explicit since the times of the First Fathers.
In November 2002, seasoned Vatican journalist Sandro Magister wrote an article entitled “Bergoglio in Pole Position” in which he described the Argentinian’s recent ascent:
Midway through November, his colleagues wanted to elect him president of the Argentine bishops’ conference. He refused. But if there had been a conclave, it would have been difficult for him to refuse the election to the papacy, because he’s the one the cardinals would vote for resoundingly, if they were called together to choose immediately the successor to John Paul II.…
At the last synod of bishops in the fall of 2001 … Bergoglio managed the meeting so well that, at the time for electing the twelve members of the secretary’s council, his brother bishops chose him with the highest vote possible.… Someone in the Vatican had the idea to call him to direct an important dicastery. “Please, I would die in the Curia,” he implored. They spared him.
Since that time, the thought of having him return to Rome as the successor of Peter has begun to spread with growing intensity. The Latin-American cardinals are increasingly focused upon him, as is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
On his return to Buenos Aires, however, he was faced with heartbreaking evidence on every street corner of how low his beloved country had sunk.
Following a run on the banks by desperate citizens fearful of losing what little money they had, the government froze all accounts in an attempt to hold off a complete collapse of the banking system. Cities across the country descended into violence and looting on December 21 and 22, 2001. In the Plaza de Mayo, President Fernando de la Rúa looked out of the windows of the Presidential Palace at a dense fog of tear gas before turning his back and fleeing in a helicopter. From the other side of the square Bergoglio, too, was watching as police responded with brutal force against the protesters, some of whom were setting fire to banks and government buildings. It was a devastating scene.
Thirty-nine people died, and hundreds more were injured. And it took another two years of economic decline before Argentina began to recover. During this time, Bergoglio continued to give pastoral support to the ever-increasing numbers of destitute and marginalized citizens. As interim president of Argentina Eduardo Duhalde said, Bergoglio “assumed a key role in the so-called Argentine Dialogue [Board].… I believe history will consider it as one of our greatest collective epics. But there were providential figures in that rescue, giant personalities who, while modestly avoiding occupying the center of the scene, were decisive so that we would not fall into social dissolution, which at the time was a real and close risk. That man, Jorge Bergoglio, was one of them.”
In April 2003 the country had regained some semblance of stability, and new elections were called. The problem, however, was the scarcity of candidates willing to take on the poisoned chalice that was the Argentine presidency. Duhalde would have run but had agreed not to when assuming the role of interim president. The only other options were former president Carlos Menem, seeking his third term, or an unknown candidate named Néstor Kirchner. When Menem withdrew in the days leading up to the election, Kirchner ran unopposed, and his left-wing government was elected by default, with just 22 percent of the vote.
Kirchner and his glamorous First Lady, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had been loyal supporters of Peronism from the time they met as students in the early 1970s, and after the 2003 election they quickly took charge of Argentine politics. From 2003 to 2015 they would rule in successive two-term governments marred by allegations of embezzlement and corruption. (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was indicted and charged with high treason in December 2017 and again in March 2018 for obstructing investigations into Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center.) Néstor Kirchner had no interest in religion or in fostering good relations with the church, and he made these feelings abundantly clear to Bergoglio from the moment he took office. Bergoglio was equally averse to the new president and was frequently critical of the government’s empty rhetoric, lack of values, and individualist outlook. On December 30, 2004, a large fire broke out in a nightclub in the working-class suburb of Once, Buenos Aires. Revelers ran for the exits only to discover that they were trapped, as most of the emergency doors had been padlocked shut to prevent people from sneaking in without paying. Bergoglio rushed to the scene, where he found hundreds of bodies laid out on the sidewalk. Desperate friends of the casualties looked on while paramedics performed CPR. He comforted as many as he could, praying over the dead and wounded, and accompanied families to the hospital.
One hundred ninety-four people were killed and a further 1,492 were injured. President Kirchner declared a three-day-long period of national mourning, but grief soon turned to anger when it was revealed that the club’s fire safety license had expired more than a month earlier and had not been renewed by the fire department. The club had no detection or alarm system, only one working fire extinguisher out of fifteen, and had allowed three thousand people into a 1,031-capacity venue. Bergoglio maintained a loyal support for the victims in the months and years that followed, issuing a damning indictment of the corruption that had led to the tragedy and ordering a mass for the victims to be celebrated on December 30 each year, when the bells of the cathedral would ring 194 times to remember those who had perished.
Meanwhile, the pope wrote to Bergoglio expressing his sadn
ess and asking the cardinal to pass on his condolences to the victims. This was most likely their last communication, for at 9:37 P.M. local time on April 2, 2005, John Paul II died.
THE THRESHOLD OF THE VATICAN
We know how the events of the conclave played out, but with a better understanding of the formative events and experiences that had shaped him to this point, the actions of this man perhaps make better sense.
He was a Jesuit through and through, and had never desired or sought power. In fact, on numerous occasions he had either flat-out refused it or taken a great deal of persuading to accept it. The mystery cardinal diarist whose account of the 2005 conclave is so revealing described Bergoglio’s look of pain as he stepped up to the altar to cast his ballot, as if begging God to spare him; and another “authoritative source” revealed how Bergoglio was “almost in tears” when he implored his supporters to give up the fight for the good of the church and to vote for Cardinal Ratzinger. As the diarist noted:
[Bergoglio was] safe on the doctrinal plane, open on the social level, impatient on the pastoral level toward the stiffness shown by some collaborators of [John Paul II] on issues of sexual ethics. Characteristics that, in the absence of a true candidate of [the] “left,” alternative to the Ratzinger line, will make Bergoglio the man of reference for the entire group of the most reluctant cardinals to vote for the dean of the Sacred College [Ratzinger]. A group whose thinking core is made up of Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, and Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Brussels, with a significant group of U.S. and Latin American cardinals, as well as some of the Roman curia.
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