Pope Francis turned 86 yesterday. This is his tenth birthday as Pope. From all over the world, messages of well-wishes and prayers arrived for the head of the church on the occasion of his birthday, read the Magyar Kurír.

Eighty-six years have passed since Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, in distant Argentina. The son of parents who emigrated from Piedmont, he trained as a butcher as a child - as he revealed on December 31, 2015, when asked by a small child. His love of singing was instilled in him by an opera music program, which he listened to week after week on the radio with his family. His father taught him early on the importance of work; he pursued various trades and graduated from a chemical engineering college.

His faith, honed in him by his grandmother, Rosa Margherita Vassallo, matured into a profession. In 1958, he entered the seminary and began his novitiate with the Jesuits. During this period, Jorge Mario Bergoglio's life was saved by a brave nun, Cornelia Carnaglio, who boldly advised her doctor what dose of antibiotic to cure him of pneumonia. On March 8, 2018, meeting with a delegation of nurses, Pope Francis thanked the Dominican sister.

He was ordained a priest in 1969. That day, her grandmother handed her a letter addressed to all her grandchildren. The young Jorge Mario preserved the message in his book of hymns, which reads: "May you live a long and happy life. But if one day pain, sickness, or the loss of a loved one should fill you with inconsolation, remember that a sigh before the tabernacle, where the greatest and noblest martyr is, and a glance at Mary standing at the foot of the cross, is a drop it can apply balm to the deepest and most painful wounds.”

In 1973, he was appointed head of the Jesuit Province of Argentina. He was ordained a bishop in 1992, then on February 28, 1998 he was appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Primate of Argentina. At the consistory held on February 21, 2001, Saint II. János Pál made him a cardinal, with the following words: "This morning, Catholic Rome surrounds the new cardinals with a loving embrace, aware that it is writing a significant new page in its two thousand-year history." These are the preludes of another historical chapter, which began in 2013 with the election of the first Latin American and also the first Jesuit pope.

XVI. After the resignation of Pope Benedict, Cardinal Bergoglio traveled to Rome. On March 13, 2013, the cardinals gathered for the conclave elected him as Péter's 265th successor. Four years later, on February 19, 2017, while visiting a parish in Rome, a small child asked him why he became pope. "The one who gets elected is not necessarily the smartest. But the one whom God intends for the Church at that moment," was the answer. As Pope, he took the name Francis. A few days after his election, he explained to his colleagues in the press that he was thinking of Saint Francis of Assisi when he chose a name for himself: "A man of poverty and peace, who loves and protects the created world".

Source: Hungarian Courier

Photo: Vatican News