“It feels like yesterday,” he confessed. Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope in history, in a podcast broadcast this Monday by the official Vatican outlet, Vatican News.

It was on March 13, 2013, when the Argentine Jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, became the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, succeeding the German Benedict XVI, the first pope to abdicate since the Middle Ages.

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of his pontificate, Pope Francis has conducted a series of interviews and a podcast in which he rails against totalitarian states, most notably Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, which threatens to suspend relations with the Vatican.

Leader of a church in crisis, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, a pastor not part of the influential Roman Curia, opted for economic transparency and “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse, while respects the most traditional views regarding celibacy, abortion, same-sex marriage and homosexuality.

A stern critic of neoliberalism, imperialism and military conflict, the Argentine pope identifies with a church that calls above all for social justice, which defends the latter, migrants fleeing war and misery and is sensitive to ecology and nature.

Ukraine and Nicaragua in his mind

During these 10 years, the head of the Catholic Church has taken positions on current international politics, denouncing the situation in Ukraine since the beginning of the war and offering himself as a great mediator.

This week he opened a new front with a country from his region, Nicaragua, in criticizing the authoritarian excesses and attacks on the Church following the sentencing of Nicaraguan bishop Rolando Álvarez to 26 years and 4 months in prison, for which the Nicaraguan government is considering severing relations with the Vatican.

On Friday, Francisco described President Daniel Ortega’s regime as a “crude dictatorship”, in an interview with the Argentine digital media Infobae.

“I have no choice but to think about an imbalance in the person who leads,” he said of Ortega.

“It is as if we wanted to establish the communist dictatorship of 1917 or the Hitler dictatorship of 1935,” he noted.

In the numerous interviews given on the tenth anniversary of his pontificate, he returned to raise the issue of war, especially in Ukraine.

“Peace. Peace to martyred Ukraine and to all other countries suffering from the horrors of war, which is always a failure for everyone.” he responded in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Despite his implacable opposition to the arms trade, the Bishop of Rome is powerless in the face of the conflicts he tirelessly denounces every week.

All his calls for peace for Ukraine have been ignored. “We need peace,” he insisted on the Vatican News podcast.

Don’t even think about getting fired

During the Bergoglian Decade, interfaith dialogue increased significantly, especially with Islam. Pope Francis, in particular, has improved ties with the Grand Imam of Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar Mosque, among many leaders who have sent congratulations.

In a letter published by Vatican News, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayebal praised the pope’s efforts to “build bridges of love and brotherhood between all people”.

Messages were also sent by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, leader of the Orthodox Christians, and Anglican leader Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury.

“He is a pope of this time. He was able to capture the needs of today and present them to the entire universal Church (…) He promotes the Church of the age to come,” said Don Roberto, a priest who traveled to the Vatican on Sunday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Pontificate of Francisco.

Fighting the culture of sexual abuse of minors by church members has been one of the most painful challenges of his papacy.

Although he lifted the papal secrecy, met with victims and forced the religious to report the cases to the hierarchy, pedophilia remains the stone in the shoe of his pontificate. Victim associations demand stricter measures.

And what do you want for yourself? “May the Lord have mercy on me. Being Pope is not an easy task. You can’t study to do this job,’ he replied.

At the age of 86 and in fragile health that requires him to use a wheelchair, Francisco does not rule out the possibility of stepping down, just like his predecessor Benedict XVI.

“At the moment I don’t have it in my agenda,” he told the Jesuit magazine Civita Cattolica last month.