Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Pope Franciscothe first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff in history, today completed his first decade of pontificate and, despite the osteoarthritis in his right knee, he does not intend to resign in the short term and says that he will only resign if fatigue “forces” him “.

His election was marked by the resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, and thus began an unprecedented stage in history, with a reigning pope and a pope emeritus living at the same time, a period that ended on December 31, 2022, with the death of Joseph Ratzinger.

With a more austere style —among other issues, he has given up using an official car—, he has tried to modernize the Catholic Church and give it a closer style. As soon as he began his pontificate, Francis chose an unexpected place to his first trip: the island of Lampedusa, in Sicily, the closest to the African coast and considered the gateway to Europe for migrants in search of a future. It was July 8, 2013, and from there he launched his message on the “globalization of indifference”. His cry of “shame” for what happened resounded around the world.

The Pope’s visit to Chile in January 2018 was considered the real dividing line in Francis’ pontificate and his fight against the child abuse by members of the Church. In this Latin American country, the visit was lived with a real rejection due to the abuse scandals, and the position of the Pope in defense of the Chilean bishop Juan Barros, accused of cover-up.

Upon his return, he commissioned a historic investigation, and in April 2018, the Pope acknowledged having made “serious assessment errors” in the case of Barros, met with the victims of the pedophile priest Fernando Karadima and summoned all the Chilean bishops to relieve them of their post.

In an attempt to show a firm position against the abuses, Pope Francis convened in February 2019 a anti-pedophile summit which brought together the entire episcopal hierarchy in the Vatican. According to estimates by victims’ associations, there could be between 50,000 and 100,000 minors who have suffered physical and sexual abuse in Catholic institutions around the world.

In addition, during these 10 years, the Pontiff has visited 59 countries, many of them from a Catholic minority, such as Egypt or the United Arab Emirates; and he has traveled to places far away from Rome, such as Myanmar and Bangladesh, manifesting the universality of his message. It is not for nothing that they call him the globalized dad.

Thus, his trip to Iraq (in March 2021) is remembered and his image praying among the ruins of the city of Mosul, a few meters from the Al Nuri mosque in Mosul, a symbol of the rise and fall of the Islamic State, turned around to the world.

Likewise, some gestures to mediate in international conflicts are remembered, among which the one on April 12, 2019 stands out, when the Pope knelt down and kissed the feet of the leaders in conflict in South Sudan in an attempt to encourage the peace process. in this African country.

Source: Eitb

Ricardo

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