Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Pontificate in 5 minutes

This article is published in issue 2-3 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until January 19, 2021

2013, 13 MARCH, 19.06
On the fifth ballot, during the second day of the conclave, the Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aged 77, is elected pope. He then turns to the cardinals who voted for him: “May God forgive you.” First Argentine, first South American, first American, first Jesuit, 266th in the series. He is also the first Pope to take the name of Francis. Looking out the window of the Loggia delle Benedizioni, he begins: «Brothers and sisters, good evening, you know that the duty of the Conclave was to give a bishop to Rome.

It seems that my brother cardinals went to get him almost at the end of the world … ». He forces the square to be silent and pray. The silence of the square, with the Pope on his knees, lasts 32 seconds.

2013
It is known that this Pope is the son of Piedmontese migrants, who had also come second in the conclave of 2005 (the one who elected Benedict XVI, above), who remained silent during the dictatorship of the generals (and for this reason they criticize him) but favored the escape of the persecuted, who opposed the Kirchner presidency and Liberation Theology. It is immediately clear that he is a nonconformist pontiff: shoes, clothes of little consequence, after being elected he goes to pay for the hotel out of his own pocket, he does not want to live in the papal apartment and he stays in Santa Marta, he does not want luxuries, nothing gold rings and the like, no popemobile. It is known that in Argentina he traveled by bus, lived in any small apartment and cooked himself. Now, as Pope, after having had himself portrayed next to Pope Emeritus Ratzinger (both dressed in white, “the two Popes”), he telephones Scalfari and gives the first of three interviews granted over the years to the founder of the Republic, always denied by the Vatican Press Office.
Papal sympathy for the old unbeliever means this: better a restless atheist than a parlor Catholic. And parlor Catholics are immediately one of his favorite targets (on New Year’s Eve 2019 he will say: “Better to live as an atheist than to go to church and hate others”). He then puts together a series of phrases that will become famous. For example “We are not an NGO”. Or: “We must not be afraid of tenderness.” The phrase “San Pietro did not have a bank” refers to the Scarano scandal, a monsignor who laundered money. He clarifies the ideas of Francis on the world financial system which he immediately executed in the Lampedusa speech. From an altar made with a fishing spear it is immediately clear that this Pope is decidedly against the policy of rejections, he wants the desperate people arriving from the sea to be welcomed and loved. An interview with Catholic Civilization will later pass him off as an “abortionist”: the mother,
who has aborted and repents with the confessor, must be acquitted. Finally, it seems that the new Pope is also a friend of gays. “If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, but who am I to judge him?” he says on July 29 to reporters flying back with him from Brazil.

2014
He has Polish archbishop Jósef Wesolowski, accused of pedophilia, arrested in full Vatican. He removes Monsignor Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano from his diocese in Paraguay, accused of having protected pedophile priests.

2015
The showers for the homeless that the Pope had installed under the colonnade of San Pietro come into operation. At the time of the shower, the poor receive a complete change of underwear and a kit that includes towel, soap, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream and deodorant. Then Raúl Castro arrives, and Francesco welcomes him with a “Bienvenido”.
It is the Pope who mediates for Cuba’s rapprochement with Obama’s United States. He will return the visit by saying mass in Havana under a portrait of Che. Welcomed – first pope – to the United States Congress, he cites Luther King and Lincoln, who were not Catholics, as a way of announcing openness to other religions (he will go to Africa in November to speak to Muslims and in February 2016 he will embrace Cuba the Orthodox patriarch Kirill). The conflict with the American episcopate begins.

2016
Extraordinary Jubilee (“Jubilee of Mercy”), convened to commemorate the fifty years since the end of the Second Vatican Council, in reality to replenish the exhausted Vatican coffers with tourists. Islamic terrorists slaughter an old priest in Rouen and Francis absolves Islam: «A war is underway, but it is not a war of religion. Religions want peace, others want war ». The following year he will go to embrace Imam al-Tayyb in Cairo to whom he will say: “We are brothers and sisters under the sun of one God” and then, on 3-5 February 2019, he will say mass in Abu Dhabi, in the Emirates , under a large wooden cross. The year 2016 ends with a trip to Krakow where Francis has his say on the problems of sexual identity: «Today to children – to children! – at school this is taught: that everyone can choose sex. And why do they teach this? Because the books are those of the people and institutions that give you the money. They are ideological colonizations, also supported by very influential countries ».

2017
In Rome manifestos against him appear and in general the dissent of the conservative part of the clergy grows. Francesco responds with an interview to Catholic Civilization: «In the Vatican there is corruption» and «The Gospel must be taken without sedatives».

2018
The case of little Alfie in a vegetative state that the English judge wants to kill. The conservatives are unleashed, the Pope is prudent, he does not pronounce himself on the problem of disconnecting the plug, shows pity for the parents (he receives the father), and says: “Not everything that is technically possible, or feasible, is for that very reason. ethically acceptable “. Then he agrees with the Chinese for the bishops to be appointed by agreement between Rome and Beijing. Monsignor Viganò’s attacks begin, and the ranks of cardinals are now dense who, publicly, consider the Pope, because of the openings to divorcees or “sodomites”, an Antichrist.

2019
In April a document attributed to Ratzinger shows an alternative line to that of Pope Francis on the so-called “non-negotiable values”. The pope emeritus, who is 92 years old, would no longer have the head to write a similar intervention, which is attributed to Bergoglio’s enemies, who insist on the concept that the true Pope is not the Argentine, but the German, and that the Argentine is an Antichrist. Francesco does not answer, but on 10 September, on the plane that takes him back to Italy
from Africa, he tells reporters: “I’m not afraid of the schism.”

2020
There is the pandemic and on March 27 the famous photo of the Pope alone, in St. Peter’s Square, blessing «Urbi et Orbi» in the rain. To the bishops who protest because they do not want to close the churches, Francis intimates: “We must obey the governments” and brings Christmas mass up to seven in the evening. Above all he says to a group of homosexual parents: “God loves your children as they are, because they are children of God” and in a film screened during the Rome Film Festival
he reiterates: «Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. What we have to create is a law on civil unions ”. The right wing of the cardinals has no more doubts: it is an Antichrist.

To subscribe to Vanity Fair, click here.

(Foto Getty Images)