1) Gov. Gen. Mary Simon to represent Canada at Pope Francis’s funeral Saturday

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Dylan Robertson, April 23, 2025

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon will represent Canada at the funeral for Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday, says Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“I’m not going to be attending the funeral, given the … crucial election, and sending the right signal,” he said Wednesday during a campaign stop as Liberal leader in Victoria.

“We’re represented at the highest level, appropriately so, and we will also have a senior delegation alongside” the viceregal, he said.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office said the rest of the delegation hasn’t been finalized.

The funeral will be held Saturday in St. Peter’s Square and will be attended by world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Frank Leo, said all five of Canada’s cardinals are expected to attend. Various bishops are also set to attend, as will Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand.

Pope Francis visited Canada in 2022 for what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system.

Simon, who is Inuk, said recently that the apology was “a testament to his commitment to respect, dialogue and collaboration across cultures and faiths.”

In 2023, Canada sent Paul Gibbard, the head of its diplomatic mission to the Holy See, to attend the funeral of pope emeritus Benedict XVI, who made the rare move of retiring from the papacy in 2013.

In 2005, at the funeral for Pope John Paul II, Canada was represented by then-prime minister Paul Martin and opposition leader Stephen Harper. The then-national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, also attended.

The Vatican announced Monday that Francis had died of a stroke and heart failure at age 88.

His 12-year pontificate was characterized by his concern for the poor and his message of inclusion, but he was also criticized by conservatives who sometimes felt alienated by his progressive bent.

— With files from The Associated Press.

2) ‘To honour him’: Canadian Bishops, Métis leader attending funeral for Pope Francis

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Jack Farrell and Brittany Hobson, April 23, 2025.

Donald Bolen, the archbishop of Regina, is travelling to Vatican City for Saturday’s funeral of Pope Francis – a journey, he says, is to honour a pontiff who mirrored his vision and his compassion.

“When (Francis) put out a book called ‘The Name of God is Mercy,’ I smiled. Because my episcopal motto is ‘mercy within mercy within mercy’ — very much that same understanding,” Bolen said in an interview.

“I had enormous respect for Pope Francis through his pontificate.”

Bolen said the pope’s devotion to dialogue and international collaboration was inspiring, as was his commitment to justice.

“Encouraging us to walk together, to learn to be a church that’s more consultative — including voices in the full range of the church and being in dialogue with us others outside the church as part of our discernment — is very inspiring to me,” Bolen said.

“It’s really out of gratitude and respect for the leadership he’s given that I want to be there.”

It will be the second papal funeral Bolen has attended, as he was working for the Vatican in 2005 when Pope John Paul II died.

Bolen joins others heading overseas to express gratitude for the leadership and teachings of Francis. He died Monday after suffering a stroke and heart failure at age 88.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon is to represent Canada at the service.

Manitoba Métis Federation President David Chartrand said he’s going as well. It will be his first time attending a pontiff’s funeral.

“The reason I’m attending this one is because of who (Francis) was, what he showed, what he displayed about his kindness to the people and always trying to help those that can’t help themselves,” Chartrand said.

In 2022, Chartrand led a delegation, including residential school survivors, elders and youth, to the Vatican to meet with Francis.

“He wanted to shake every one of our delegates hands, even though he was tired. You could tell he was in pain, but he did not want to miss that opportunity,” recalled Chartrand. “He listened very carefully to all the words our elders said to him … I saw the humbleness and the humility of this pope, and it touched my heart.”

A few weeks earlier, Francis had issued his first apology to Indigenous people for the conduct of Catholic church members involved in residential schools. About 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, more than 60 per cent of which were run by the Catholic church.

Francis later travelled to Canada to fulfil one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final calls to action by apologizing on Canadian soil.

Chartrand said it’s a moment in the church’s history that should not be forgotten. A few staff members are joining Chartrand to pay their respects.

“It’s going to be long hours upon hours in a lineup, I’m sure. But I’m going to do it, because I want to show my honour to (Francis) on behalf of the Red River Métis government,” Chartrand said.

The archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Frank Leo, said all five of Canada’s cardinals are to attend.

Also attending will be Diocese of Calgary Bishop William McGrattan, who also serves as president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

McGrattan, who will represent more than 100 Canadian bishops, expects it will be an emotional experience to honour a pontiff whose desire to serve his flock was evident on Easter Sunday. Despite his health, Francis delivered a blessing to a crowd in St. Peter’s Square.

“I think that’s why it was such a shock, his passing immediately on Easter Monday,” McGrattan said.

“But maybe that’s the providence of God

3) Pope Francis’ funeral will be held on Saturday

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Canadian Press, April 22, 2025

Vatican Media image via AP

Pope Francis’ funeral has been set for Saturday at 10 a.m. local time in St. Peter’s Square, to be celebrated by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

Cardinals met at the Vatican to schedule Pope Francis’ funeral and burial, planning the conclave to elect his successor and make other decisions about running the Catholic Church as world leaders and the ordinary faithful grieve the pontiff’s death.

They have decided the public viewing of Pope Francis will begin Wednesday in St. Peter’s Basilica, after his casket is taken by procession from the Vatican hotel where he lived.

What to know:

• The funeral and public viewing: The public viewing of Pope Francis as soon as Wednesday morning in St. Peter’s Basilica, followed by the funeral set for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square.
• Francis’ burial site: In his final will, Francis confirmed he would be buried at St. Mary Major basilica, which is outside the Vatican and home to his favorite icon of the Virgin Mary.
• The next pope: Eligible cardinals will vote for a papal successor in the Sistine Chapel via a process known as “the Conclave.” The winner must receive at least two-thirds of the vote from those cardinals who are under age 80 and thus eligible to participate.

4) Bells toll as Pope Francis’ body is transferred to St. Peter’s Basilica for 3 days of public viewing

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Colleen Barry and Nicole Winfield, April 21, 2025

The bells of St. Peter’s tolled Wednesday as the body of Pope Francis was transferred from the Vatican hotel where he lived into the basilica, escorted by a procession of solemn cardinals and Swiss Guards through the same piazza where the pontiff had greeted the faithful from his popemobile just days before in what became his final good-bye.

Pallbearers carried the simple wooden coffin on their shoulders through the Vatican’s archway gates, out into St. Peter’s Square and into the basilica, the cardinals in their scarlet cassocks, bishops in their purple robes and the Swiss Guards in their golden and blue uniforms processing slowly behind.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is running the Vatican temporarily until a new pope is elected, led the procession, with clouds of incense preceding him as the church choir began chanting the Litany of Saints hymn. In pairs, the cardinals approached the casket, bowed and made a sign of the cross, followed by small groups of bishops, ushers, priests and nuns.

Heads of state are expected for Francis’ funeral Saturday, but the three days of public viewing in the basilica will allow ordinary Catholics to grieve the 88-year-old pope, who died Monday after suffering a stroke. The basilica was being kept open until midnight to accommodate the crowds, a mourning period that will end on Friday at 7 p.m., when Francis’ casket is closed and sealed.

Mourners in the piazza watched as Francis’ casket passed them by, along the same path the pope had travelled just days before, on Easter Sunday, in what became his final popemobile tour through the faithful. It was a surprise salute, which Francis decided at the last minute after being assured by his nurse he could do it despite his continued frail health from pneumonia.

Simplified rituals reflect Francis’ wishes

Francis’ death and funeral inaugurates a carefully orchestrated period of transition in the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church, with cardinals gathering over the coming week before entering into a conclave, the secretive ritual voting in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope. There are 135 cardinals under age 80 and eligible to vote in the conclave, and the new pontiff will likely come from within their ranks. The conclave is not expected to begin before May 5.

Francis first lay in state in the Domus Santa Marta hotel in a private viewing for Vatican residents and the papal household. Images released by the Vatican on Tuesday showed Francis lying in an open casket, wearing the traditional pointed headdress of bishops and red robes, his hands folded over a rosary. The Vatican’s No. 2, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, was pictured praying by Francis.

Once inside the basilica, Francis’ casket wasn’t put on an elevated bier — as was the case with past popes — but was just placed on an inclined ramp the main altar of the 16th-century basilica, facing the pews, with four Swiss Guards standing at attention by its side. It was in keeping with Francis’ own wishes for all the rituals surrounding a papal funeral to be simplified and reflect the pope’s role as a simple pastor, not a world leader.

“Look kindly, Lord, on the life and works of your servant, our Pope Francis,” Farrell said from the altar. “Welcome him into the dwelling of perpetual light and peace and grant that your faithful people may follow fervently in his footsteps, bearing witness to the Gospel of Jesus.”

Italian police have tightened security for the viewing and the funeral, carrying out foot and horse patrols around the Vatican, where pilgrims continued to arrive for the Holy Year celebrations that Francis opened in December. The faithful who walk through St. Peter’s Holy Door are granted indulgences, a way to help atone for sins.

“For me, Pope Francis represents a great pastor, as well as a great friend to all of us,’’ said Micale Sales, visiting St. Peter’s Basilica from Brazil.

“I think he spread a positive message around the world, saying there shouldn’t be any violence, there should be peace around the world,’’ said Amit Kukreja, from Australia.

Planning for the conclave is now underway

The funeral has been set for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, and will be attended by leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy.

Cardinals are continuing their meetings this week to plan the conclave to elect Francis’ successor, make other decisions about running the Catholic Church as world leaders and the ordinary faithful grieve the pontiff’s death.

History’s first Latin American pontiff charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated many conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change. He last appeared in public on Sunday with an Easter blessing and popemobile tour through a cheering crowd in St. Peter’s Square.

He had some reservations about looping through the square packed with 50,000 faithful, Vatican News reported on Tuesday, but overcame them — and was thankful that he had greeted the crowd. He died the next morning.

“The death of a pope is not a small thing, because we’ve lost our leader,’’ said Julio Henrique from Brazil. “But still, in a few days, we will have a new leader. So … the thing of hope remains. Who will assume Peter’s throne?” God and a grace to be seen in this.”

5) Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff who ministered with a charming, humble style, dies at 88

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Nicole Winfield, April 21, 2025

Pope Francis pauses during an interview with The Associated Press at The Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis, File)

Pope Francis, history’s first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died Monday. He was 88.

The Vatican said Francis died of a stroke that put him into a coma and led to heart failure.

Bells tolled in Catholic churches from his native Argentina to the Philippines and across Rome as news spread around the world.

“At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell said from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived.

Francis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalization of his 12-year papacy.

He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday — a day before his death — to bless thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, drawing wild cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

Francis performed the blessing from the same loggia where he was introduced on March 13, 2013, as the 266th pope.

From his first greeting that night — a remarkably normal “Buonasera” (“Good evening”) — to his embrace of refugees and the downtrodden, Francis signalled a very different tone for the papacy, stressing humility over hubris for a Catholic Church beset by scandal and accusations of indifference.

The Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a 2,000-year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprise resignation led to Francis’ election.

But Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his progressive bent, outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and crackdown on traditionalists. His greatest test came in 2018 when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, and the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew.

And then Francis, the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries, navigated the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City.

“We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented,” Francis told an empty St. Peter’s Square in March 2020. Calling for a rethink of the global economic framework, he said the pandemic showed the need for “all of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”

World leaders on Monday extolled Francis’ commitment to the marginalized. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is largely Catholic, wrote on X: “From Buenos Aires to Rome, Pope Francis wanted the church to bring joy and hope to the poorest. … May this hope forever outlast him.”

Flags flew at half-staff in Italy, and crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square. When the great bells of St. Peter’s Basilica began tolling, tourists stopped in their tracks to record the moment on their phones.

Johann Xavier, who travelled from Australia, hoped to see the pope during his visit. “But then we heard about it when we came in here. It pretty much devastated all of us,’’ he said.

Francis’ death sets off a weekslong process of allowing the faithful to pay their final respects, first for Vatican officials in the Santa Marta chapel and then in St. Peter’s for the general public, followed by a funeral and a conclave to elect a new pope.

As the sun was setting on Monday evening, the Vatican held a Rosary prayer in St. Peter’s Square in its first public commemoration. The Vatican later said Francis has decreed in his will that he will be buried in St. Mary Major Basilica in a simple underground tomb with only “Franciscus” written on it.

Reforming the Vatican

Francis was elected on a mandate to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and finances, but went further in shaking up the church without changing its core doctrine. “Who am I to judge?” he replied when asked about a purportedly gay priest.

The comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ+ community and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed sexual propriety over unconditional love. “Being homosexual is not a crime,” he told The Associated Press in 2023, urging an end to civil laws that criminalize it.

Stressing mercy, Francis changed the church’s position on the death penalty, calling it inadmissible in all circumstances. He also declared the possession of nuclear weapons, not just their use, was “immoral.”

In other firsts, he approved an agreement with China over bishop nominations that had vexed the Vatican for decades, met the Russian patriarch and charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq.

He reaffirmed the all-male, celibate priesthood and upheld the church’s opposition to abortion, equating it to “hiring a hit man to solve a problem.”

Roles for women

But he added women to important decision-making roles and allowed them to serve as lectors and acolytes in parishes. He let women vote alongside bishops in periodic Vatican meetings, following long-standing complaints that women do much of the church’s work but are barred from power.

Sister Nathalie Becquart, whom Francis named to one of the highest Vatican jobs, said his legacy was a vision of a church where men and women existed in a relationship of reciprocity and respect.

“It was about shifting a pattern of domination — from human being to the creation, from men to women — to a pattern of cooperation,” said Becquart, the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod.

Still, a note of criticism came Monday from the Women’s Ordination Conference, which had been frustrated by Francis’ unwillingness to push for the ordination of women.

“His repeated ‘closed door’ policy on women’s ordination was painfully incongruous with his otherwise pastoral nature, and for many, a betrayal of the synodal, listening church he championed. This made him a complicated, frustrating, and sometimes heartbreaking figure for many women,” the statement said.

The church as refuge

While Francis did not allow women to be ordained, the voting reform was part of a revolutionary change in emphasizing what the church should be: a refuge for everyone — “todos, todos, todos” (“everyone, everyone, everyone”). Migrants, the poor, prisoners and outcasts were invited to his table far more than presidents or powerful CEOs.

“For Pope Francis, (the goal) was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone,” said Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo, who takes charge after a pontiff’s death.

Francis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed the world to protect God’s creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.

After visiting Mexico in 2016, Francis said of then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out “is not Christian.”

While progressives were thrilled with Francis’ radical focus on Jesus’ message of mercy and inclusion, it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of the West. Some even called him a heretic.

A few cardinals openly challenged him. Francis usually responded with his typical answer to conflict: silence.

He made it easier for married Catholics to get an annulment, allowed priests to absolve women who had had abortions and decreed that priests could bless same-sex couples. He opened debate on issues like homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors wiggle room to discern how to accompany their flocks, rather than handing them strict rules to apply.

St. Francis of Assisi as a model

Francis lived in the Vatican hotel instead of the Apostolic Palace, wore his old orthotic shoes and not the red loafers of the papacy, and rode in compact cars. It wasn’t a gimmick.

“I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful,” he told a Jesuit journal in 2013. “I see the church as a field hospital after battle.”

If becoming the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope wasn’t enough, Francis was also the first to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century friar known for personal simplicity and care for society’s outcasts.

Francis formally apologized to Indigenous peoples for the crimes of the church from colonial times onward. And he went to society’s fringes to minister with mercy: caressing the deformed head of a man in St. Peter’s Square, kissing the tattoo of a Holocaust survivor, or inviting Argentina’s garbage scavengers to join him onstage in Rio de Janeiro.

“We have always been marginalized, but Pope Francis always helped us,” said Coqui Vargas, a transgender woman whose Roman community forged a unique relationship with Francis.

His first trip as pope was to the Italian island of Lampedusa, then the epicentre of Europe’s migration crisis. He consistently chose to visit poor countries where Christians were often persecuted minorities, rather than the centers of global Catholicism.

Friend and fellow Argentine, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, said his concern was based on the Beatitudes — the eight blessings Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount for the meek, the merciful, the poor in spirit and others.

“Why are the Beatitudes the program of this pontificate? Because they were the basis of Jesus Christ’s own program,” Sánchez said.

Missteps on sexual abuse scandal

But more than a year passed before Francis met with survivors of priestly sexual abuse, and victims’ groups initially questioned whether he really understood the scope of the problem.

Francis did create a sex abuse commission to advise the church on best practices, but it lost influence after a few years, and its recommendation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests went nowhere.

And then came the greatest crisis of his papacy, when he discredited Chilean abuse victims in 2018 and stood by a controversial bishop linked to their abuser. Realizing his error, Francis invited the victims to the Vatican for a personal mea culpa and summoned the leadership of the Chilean church to resign en masse.

As that crisis concluded, a new one erupted over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington and a counsellor to three popes.

Francis had actually moved swiftly to sideline McCarrick amid an accusation he had molested a teenage altar boy in the 1970s. But Francis nevertheless was accused by the Vatican’s one-time U.S. ambassador of having rehabilitated McCarrick early in his papacy.

Francis eventually defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused adults as well as minors. He changed church law to remove the pontifical secret surrounding abuse cases and enacted procedures to investigate bishops who abused or covered for their pedophile priests, seeking to end impunity for the hierarchy.

“He sincerely wanted to do something and he transmitted that,” said Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean abuse survivor Francis discredited who later developed a close friendship with the pontiff.

But groups that advocated for more action on sexual abuse expressed disappointment in Francis’ legacy.

“Pope Francis was a beacon of hope to many of the world’s most desperate and marginalized people. But what we most needed from this pope was justice for the Church’s own wounded, the children and adults sexually abused by Catholic clergy. In this realm, where Francis had supreme power, he refused to make the necessary changes,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the U.S.-based group BishopAccountability.

A change from Benedict

The road to Francis’ 2013 election was paved by Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign and retire — the first in 600 years.

Francis didn’t shy from Benedict’s potentially uncomfortable shadow. Francis embraced him as an elder statesman and adviser, coaxing him out of his cloistered retirement to participate in the public life of the church until Benedict’s death in 2022.

“It’s like having your grandfather in the house, a wise grandfather,” Francis said.

Francis’ looser liturgical style and pastoral priorities made clear he and the German-born theologian came from very different religious traditions, and Francis directly overturned several decisions of his predecessor.

He made sure Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, a hero to the liberation theology movement in Latin America, was canonized after his case languished under Benedict over concerns about the credo’s Marxist bent.

Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Benedict had relaxed, arguing it was divisive. The move riled Francis’ traditionalist critics and opened sustained conflict with right-wing Catholics, particularly in the U.S.

Conservatives oppose Francis

By then, conservatives had already turned away from Francis, betrayed after he opened debate on allowing remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments if they didn’t get an annulment — a church ruling that their first marriage was invalid.

“We don’t like this pope,” headlined Italy’s conservative daily Il Foglio a few months into the papacy, reflecting the unease of the small but vocal traditionalist Catholic movement.

Those same critics amplified their complaints after Francis approved church blessings for same-sex couples, and a controversial accord with China over nominating bishops.

Its details were never released, but conservative critics bashed it as a sellout to communist China, while the Vatican defended it as the best deal it could get.

U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a figurehead in the anti-Francis opposition, said the church had become “like a ship without a rudder.”

Burke waged his opposition campaign for years, starting when Francis fired him as the Vatican’s supreme court justice and culminating with his vocal opposition to Francis’ 2023 synod on the church’s future.

Francis eventually sanctioned Burke financially, accusing him of sowing “disunity.”

Francis insisted his bishops and cardinals imbue themselves with the “odour of their flock” and minister to the faithful, voicing displeasure when they didn’t.

His 2014 Christmas address to the Vatican Curia was one of the greatest public papal reprimands ever: Standing in the marbled Apostolic Palace, Francis ticked off 15 ailments he said can afflict his closest collaborators, including “spiritual Alzheimer’s,” lusting for power and the “terrorism of gossip.”

Trying to eliminate corruption, Francis oversaw the reform of the scandal-marred Vatican bank and sought to wrestle Vatican bureaucrats into financial line, limiting their compensation and ability to receive gifts or award public contracts.

He authorized Vatican police to raid his own secretariat of state and the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency amid suspicions about a 350 million euro investment in a London real estate venture. After a 2 1/2-year trial, the Vatican tribunal convicted a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, of embezzlement and returned mixed verdicts to nine others, acquitting one.

The trial, though, proved to be a reputational boomerang for the Holy See, showing deficiencies in the Vatican’s legal system, unseemly turf battles among monsignors, and how the pope had intervened on behalf of prosecutors.

While earning praise for trying to turn the Vatican’s finances around, Francis angered U.S. conservatives for his frequent excoriation of the global financial market.

Economic justice was an important theme of his papacy, and he didn’t hide it in his first meeting with journalists when he said he wanted a “poor church that is for the poor.”

In his first major teaching document, “The Joy of the Gospel,” Francis denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive.

“Money must serve, not rule!” he said in urging political reforms.

Some U.S. conservatives branded Francis a Marxist. He jabbed back by saying he had many friends who were Marxists.

Soccer, opera and prayer

Born Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants.

He credited his devout grandmother Rosa with teaching him how to pray. Weekends were spent listening to opera on the radio, going to Mass and attending matches of the family’s beloved San Lorenzo soccer club. As pope, his love of soccer brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors.

He said he received his religious calling at 17 while going to confession, recounting in a 2010 biography that, “I don’t know what it was, but it changed my life. … I realized that they were waiting for me.”

He entered the diocesan seminary but switched to the Jesuit order in 1958, attracted to its missionary tradition and militancy.

Around this time, he suffered from pneumonia, which led to the removal of part of his right lung. His frail health prevented him from becoming a missionary, and his less-than-robust lung capacity was perhaps responsible for his whisper of a voice and reluctance to sing at Mass.

On Dec. 13, 1969, he was ordained a priest, and immediately began teaching. In 1973, he was named head of the Jesuits in Argentina, an appointment he later acknowledged was “crazy” given he was only 36. “My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,” he admitted in his Civilta Cattolica interview.

Life under Argentina’s dictatorship

His six-year tenure as the head of the order in Argentina coincided with the country’s murderous 1976-83 dictatorship, when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents.

Bergoglio didn’t publicly confront the junta and was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work.

He refused for decades to counter that version of events. Only in a 2010 authorized biography did he finally recount the lengths he used to save them, persuading the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so he could celebrate Mass instead. Once in the junta leader’s home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy. Both priests were eventually released, among the few to have survived prison.

As pope, accounts began to emerge of the many people — priests, seminarians and political dissidents —whom Bergoglio actually saved during the “dirty war,” letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country.

Bergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research a never-finished thesis. Returning to Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during a period he described as a time of “great interior crisis.” Out of favour with more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually rescued from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later, and was made a cardinal in 2001.

He came close to becoming pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, gaining the second-most votes in several rounds before bowing out.

Associated Press writer Colleen Barry contributed from Milan.

6) None of Canada’s five cardinals likely to be next pope, Vatican experts say

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Maura Forrest, April 21, 2025

A Canadian cardinal was a top contender the last time a new pope was elected, but observers say that’s unlikely to be the case this time around. 

Canada’s five cardinals all have marks against them, ranging from advanced age to inexperience to allegations of sexual misconduct, according to Vatican experts. 

“I would be quite surprised if one of them was elected,” said Mark McGowan, a professor of history at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto. “I don’t think our five guys in Canada are really up there in the running, in the top tier.”

The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis had died after 12 years at the head of the Catholic Church. The 88-year-old pontiff had spent five weeks in hospital earlier this year, where he was treated for pneumonia in both lungs.

Emma Anderson, a professor of religious studies at the University of Ottawa, said Cardinal Gérald Lacroix, archbishop of Quebec, would have the best shot at replacing Francis from among Canada’s five cardinals.

Pope Francis named Lacroix a cardinal in 2014 and appointed him to his nine-member council of cardinal advisers in 2023. At “a very youthful 67,” Anderson said, Lacroix is considerably younger than Francis when he was elected pope at age 76.

However, Lacroix was named last year in a class-action lawsuit against the archdiocese of Quebec. He was accused of touching a 17-year-old without her consent in Quebec City between 1987 and 1988.

A church-led investigation found no evidence of sexual misconduct, and Anderson said he is considered within the church to have been exonerated. Still, “even just the breath or hint of something being wrong can often derail careers,” she added.

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who was touted in 2013 as a front-runner to replace Pope Benedict XVI, was named in the same class-action lawsuit. He was accused by one woman of inappropriate touching, which he has denied.

Ouellet, who hails from the tiny Quebec village of La Motte, was named a cardinal in 2003 and headed the powerful Vatican office that oversees the selection of new bishops from 2010 until his retirement in 2023.

When Ouellet turned 80 last June, he lost the right to vote in the conclave that will choose the next pontiff. Technically, he could still be elected pope — though cardinals lose their eligibility to vote at age 80, they can still receive votes. But that would be unusual, according to McGowan.

“I think his time has kind of come and gone,” Anderson said. “I think he’s too old and damaged now.”

Two other Canadian cardinals are also nearing the age of 80. Thomas Collins, 78, is the former archbishop of Toronto and was named a cardinal in 2012 by Benedict. Aside from his age, Anderson said, he is likely too conservative to be a top choice for many of the cardinals elevated by the more liberal Francis.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, 78, is much more closely linked to Francis, McGowan said. A Czech-born social justice advocate, he spoke out recently against the Trump administration’s plans to gut USAID. Czerny is a Jesuit, like Francis, who made him a cardinal in 2019. 

But McGowan said Czerny’s age will work against him. “He’s an extraordinarily bright man,” he said. “But at 78, how many years would they get out of him?”

Canada’s newest cardinal is 53-year-old Francis Leo, a Montreal native who last year was elevated to the highest rank below the pope, after succeeding Collins as archbishop of Toronto in 2023. McGowan and Anderson both said Leo is likely too young and inexperienced to be a contender this time around.

There are 252 living cardinals, only 135 of whom are eligible to vote in a conclave. Eighty per cent of the electors were appointed by Francis, and McGowan said it’s likely the College of Cardinals will choose a new pope in the same vein as Francis. “I would put my money on someone who’s pastoral and someone who’s multilingual, for sure,” he said.

He and Anderson both pointed to 67-year-old Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as a likely front-runner. “He’s almost seen as a new version or a new face of the Franciscan legacy,” Anderson said. “Some even call him the Asian Francis.”

They said 70-year-old Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, is another top contender. 

Pope Francis made a point of naming cardinals from around the globe, including from many countries that had never been represented in the College of Cardinals. Anderson said this conclave will be the first without a majority of European electors.

But that diversity could add an element of uncertainty for those hoping to see Francis’s legacy carried on.

“I think liberals would love to see a pope like Pope Francis that comes from a new and under-represented part of the Catholic world,” Anderson said. “I think there’s a lot of people out there who would love to see an African pope, or an Asian pope.

“But one of the things that comes with that is that there’s many parts of the Global South that are much more conservative theologically.”