This is not merely a biographical detail. His papacy was transformative in shaping a Catholic Church that was not focused solely on Europe. He shifted its attention from the old continent to the world’s peripheries, aspiring to create a truly global church.
Before his election, Pope Francis was called Jorge Mario Bergoglio and had, since 1998, held the office of Archbishop of Buenos Aires. In Argentina, he worked to expand and support the efforts of priests serving in the slums.
The Catholic Church has maintained a presence in the peripheries of Buenos Aires since the 1960s, when a group called Priests for the Third World established itself in impoverished neighbourhoods. These priests advocated for the rights of their parishioners and preached liberation theology, a movement that aligns the Catholic Church with the struggles of marginalised groups.
The theme of the peripheries became a defining thread of Pope Francis’s papacy. Days before he became pope, Francis told the cardinals that elected him that the Church must “come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries”.
Without doing so, he warned, the Church risks becoming structurally disconnected from the ambivalent and contradictory processes that shape the modern global era.
Continues . . . .
For the full article by Massimo D'Angelo, visit the Conversation.
ENDS