ARGENTINA/ROME
Telegraph (UK)
He loves tango, pays his own bills and promises a ‘church for the poor’. Philip Sherwell profiles Pope Francis, the outsider chosen to save the Church from scandal
By Philip Sherwell in Buenos Aires, and Nick Squires in Rome
7:00AM GMT 17 Mar 2013
Beneath the frescoed ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, a startling vision dawned on Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was going to be elected as the next pope. Support for the Argentine clergyman was, he realised, reaching “dangerous” levels. The man so convinced he would not be elected he booked a return, economy-class ticket was, in fact, not going back home to Buenos Aires. His future was in Rome.
“I had next to me the archbishop emeritus of São Paulo, Cláudio Hummes, a great friend of mine,” he said yesterday in his first public reflections on the moment.
“When things became a bit dangerous, he comforted me, and when the vote for me reached the two-thirds majority, a moment in which the cardinals started applauding because they had chosen a Pope, he hugged me, he kissed me and he said: ‘Don’t forget the poor.’”
It was advice that the man now known as Pope Francis evidently took to heart. “That word, the poor, lodged in me here,” Francis said, tapping his head. “It was then that I thought of St Francis. And then I thought of wars and about peace and that’s how the name came to me – a man of peace, a poor man… and how I would like a church of the poor, for the poor.”
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