title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: The novella "The Princess and the Queen, or, the Blacks and the Greens" appeared in Tor Books's 2013 anthology "Dangerous Women" and explains some of the Targaryen backstory two centuries before the events of the novels. "The Rogue Prince, or, a King's Brother", published in the 2014 anthology "Rogues", is itself a prequel to the events of "The Princess and the Queen". The novella "The Sons of the Dragon", published in the 2017 anthology "The Book of Swords", is the story of Aegon the Conqueror's two sons Aenys I and Maegor I "The Cruel". All three of these stories were incorporated as parts of "Fire & Blood", a book chronicling the history of the Targaryen line.


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: Chapter sets from the novels were also compiled into three novellas that were released between 1996 and 2003 by "Asimov's Science Fiction" and "Dragon":


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: "Fire & Blood" is Martin's complete history of House Targaryen, to be released in two volumes. The first volume was released on November 20, 2018.


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: With the popularity of the series growing, HBO optioned "A Song of Ice and Fire" for a television adaptation in 2007. A pilot episode was produced in late 2009, and a series commitment for nine further episodes was made in March 2010. The series, titled "Game of Thrones", premiered in April 2011 to great acclaim and ratings (see "Game of Thrones" § Reception). The network picked up the show for a second season covering "A Clash of Kings" two days later. Shortly after the conclusion of the first season, the show received 13 Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, winning Outstanding Main Title Design and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Peter Dinklage's portrayal of Tyrion Lannister. HBO announced a renewal for a third season in April 2012, ten days after the season 2 premiere. Due to the length of the corresponding book, the third season only covered roughly the first half of "A Storm of Swords".


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: Early during the development of the TV series, Martin told major plot points to producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Martin was confident he would have published at least "The Winds of Winter" before the TV series overtook him. Nevertheless, there were general concerns about whether Martin would be able to stay ahead of the show. As a result, head writers Benioff and Weiss learned more future plot points from Martin in 2013 to help them set up the show's new possible seasons. This included the end stories for all the core characters. Deviations from the books' storylines were considered, but a two-year hiatus to wait for new books was not an option for them (as the child actors continue to grow and the show's popularity would wane).


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: Shortly after the season 3 premiere in March 2013, the network announced that "Game of Thrones" would be returning for a fourth season, which would cover the second half of "A Storm of Swords "along with the beginnings of "A Feast for Crows "and "A Dance With Dragons". "Game of Thrones" was nominated for 15 Emmy Awards for season 3. Two days after the fourth season premiered in April 2014, HBO renewed "Game of Thrones" for a fifth and sixth season. Season 5 premiered on April 12, 2015, and set a Guinness World Records for winning the highest number of Emmy Awards for a series in a single season and year, winning 12 out of 24 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series.


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: These episodes were watched by 8 million viewers, setting a record number for the series. On January 2, 2016, Martin confirmed that the sixth volume would not be published before the start of the sixth season of the HBO series. The sixth season premiered on April 24, 2016. These episodes received the most nominations for the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards with 23, winning 12, including the award for Outstanding Drama Series. The seventh season premiered on July 16, 2017. The eighth and final season premiered on April 14, 2019.


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: A spin-off prequel series, "House of the Dragon", was later developed based on Martin's "Fire & Blood". The first season premiered on August 21, 2022.


title: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: "A Song of Ice and Fire" has spawned an industry of spin-off products. Fantasy Flight Games released a collectible card game, a board game, and two collections of artwork inspired by "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Various roleplaying game products were released by Guardians of Order and Green Ronin. Dynamite Entertainment adapted "A Game of Thrones" into a same-titled monthly comic in 2011. Several video games are available or in production, including "" (2011) and "Game of Thrones" (2012) by Cyanide; both received mediocre ratings from critics. A social network game titled "Game of Thrones Ascent" (2013) by Disruptor Beam allows players to live the life of a noble during the series' period setting. Random House released an official map book called "The Lands of Ice and Fire", which includes old and new maps of the "Ice and Fire" world. The companion book "The World of Ice & Fire" by Martin and the Westeros.org owners Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson was published in October 2014. Other licensed products include full-sized weapon reproductions, a range of collectable figures, Westeros coinage reproductions, and a large number of gift and collectible items based on the HBO television series. The popularity of the HBO series has made its version of the Iron Throne an icon of the entire media franchise.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry, and is the largest sector of the electronics industry.


title: E-commerce

text: The term was coined and first employed by Dr. Robert Jacobson, Principal Consultant to the California State Assembly's Utilities & Commerce Committee, in the title and text of California's Electronic Commerce Act, carried by the late Committee Chairwoman Gwen Moore (D-L.A.) and enacted in 1984.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce typically uses the web for at least a part of a transaction's life cycle although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail. Typical e-commerce transactions include the purchase of products (such as books from Amazon) or services (such as music downloads in the form of digital distribution such as iTunes Store). There are three areas of e-commerce: online retailing, electronic markets, and online auctions. E-commerce is supported by electronic business. The existence value of e-commerce is to allow consumers to shop online and pay online through the Internet, saving the time and space of customers and enterprises, greatly improving transaction efficiency, especially for busy office workers, but also saving a lot of valuable time.


title: E-commerce

text: Contemporary electronic commerce can be classified into two categories. The first category is business based on types of goods sold (involves everything from ordering "digital" content for immediate online consumption, to ordering conventional goods and services, to "meta" services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce). The second category is based on the nature of the participant (B2B, B2C, C2B and C2C).


title: E-commerce

text: On the institutional level, big corporations and financial institutions use the internet to exchange financial data to facilitate domestic and international business. Data integrity and security are pressing issues for electronic commerce.


title: E-commerce

text: Aside from traditional e-commerce, the terms m-Commerce (mobile commerce) as well (around 2013) t-Commerce have also been used.


title: E-commerce

text: In the United States, California's Electronic Commerce Act (1984), enacted by the Legislature, and the more recent California Privacy Rights Act (2020) enacted through a popular election proposition, control specifically how electronic commerce may be conducted in California. In the US in its entirety, electronic commerce activities are regulated more broadly by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These activities include the use of commercial e-mails, online advertising and consumer privacy. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes national standards for direct marketing over e-mail. The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates all forms of advertising, including online advertising, and states that advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive. Using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, the FTC has brought a number of cases to enforce the promises in corporate privacy statements, including promises about the security of consumers' personal information. As a result, any corporate privacy policy related to e-commerce activity may be subject to enforcement by the FTC.


title: E-commerce

text: The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, which came into law in 2008, amends the Controlled Substances Act to address online pharmacies.


title: E-commerce

text: Conflict of laws in cyberspace is a major hurdle for harmonization of legal framework for e-commerce around the world. In order to give a uniformity to e-commerce law around the world, many countries adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996).<ref name="http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/uncitral_texts/electronic_commerce/1996Model.html"></ref>


title: E-commerce

text: Internationally there is the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN), which was formed in 1991 from an informal network of government customer fair trade organisations. The purpose was stated as being to find ways of co-operating on tackling consumer problems connected with cross-border transactions in both goods and services, and to help ensure exchanges of information among the participants for mutual benefit and understanding. From this came Econsumer.gov, an ICPEN initiative since April 2001. It is a portal to report complaints about online and related transactions with foreign companies.


title: E-commerce

text: There is also Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) was established in 1989 with the vision of achieving stability, security and prosperity for the region through free and open trade and investment. APEC has an Electronic Commerce Steering Group as well as working on common privacy regulations throughout the APEC region.


title: E-commerce

text: In Australia, Trade is covered under Australian Treasury Guidelines for electronic commerce and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission regulates and offers advice on how to deal with businesses online, and offers specific advice on what happens if things go wrong.


title: E-commerce

text: In the United Kingdom, The Financial Services Authority (FSA) was formerly the regulating authority for most aspects of the EU's Payment Services Directive (PSD), until its replacement in 2013 by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. The UK implemented the PSD through the Payment Services Regulations 2009 (PSRs), which came into effect on 1 November 2009. The PSR affects firms providing payment services and their customers. These firms include banks, non-bank credit card issuers and non-bank merchant acquirers, e-money issuers, etc. The PSRs created a new class of regulated firms known as payment institutions (PIs), who are subject to prudential requirements. Article 87 of the PSD requires the European Commission to report on the implementation and impact of the PSD by 1 November 2012.


title: E-commerce

text: In China, the Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China (promulgated on 25 September 2000), stipulated the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as the government department regulating all telecommunications related activities, including electronic commerce. On the same day, The Administrative Measures on Internet Information Services released, is the first administrative regulation to address profit-generating activities conducted through the Internet, and lay the foundation for future regulations governing e-commerce in China. On 28 August 2004, the eleventh session of the tenth NPC Standing Committee adopted The Electronic Signature Law, which regulates data message, electronic signature authentication and legal liability issues. It is considered the first law in China's e-commerce legislation. It was a milestone in the course of improving China's electronic commerce legislation, and also marks the entering of China's rapid development stage for electronic commerce legislation.


title: E-commerce

text: In 2010, the United Kingdom had the highest per capita e-commerce spending in the world. As of 2013, the Czech Republic was the European country where e-commerce delivers the biggest contribution to the enterprises' total revenue. Almost a quarter (24%) of the country's total turnover is generated via the online channel.


title: E-commerce

text: Among emerging economies, China's e-commerce presence continues to expand every year. With 668 million Internet users, China's online shopping sales reached $253 billion in the first half of 2015, accounting for 10% of total Chinese consumer retail sales in that period. The Chinese retailers have been able to help consumers feel more comfortable shopping online. e-commerce transactions between China and other countries increased 32% to 2.3 trillion yuan ($375.8 billion) in 2012 and accounted for 9.6% of China's total international trade. In 2013, Alibaba had an e-commerce market share of 80% in China. In 2014, there were 600 million Internet users in China (twice as many as in the US), making it the world's biggest online market. China is also the largest e-commerce market in the world by value of sales, with an estimated in 2016. Research shows that Chinese consumer motivations are different enough from Western audiences to require unique e-commerce app designs instead of simply porting Western apps into the Chinese market.


title: E-commerce

text: Recent research indicates that electronic commerce, commonly referred to as e-commerce, presently shapes the manner in which people shop for products. The GCC countries have a rapidly growing market and are characterized by a population that becomes wealthier (Yuldashev). As such, retailers have launched Arabic-language websites as a means to target this population. Secondly, there are predictions of increased mobile purchases and an expanding internet audience (Yuldashev). The growth and development of the two aspects make the GCC countries become larger players in the electronic commerce market with time progress. Specifically, research shows that the e-commerce market is expected to grow to over $20 billion by 2020 among these GCC countries (Yuldashev). The e-commerce market has also gained much popularity among western countries, and in particular Europe and the U.S. These countries have been highly characterized by consumer-packaged goods (CPG) (Geisler, 34). However, trends show that there are future signs of a reverse. Similar to the GCC countries, there has been increased purchase of goods and services in online channels rather than offline channels. Activist investors are trying hard to consolidate and slash their overall cost and the governments in western countries continue to impose more regulation on CPG manufacturers (Geisler, 36). In these senses, CPG investors are being forced to adapt to e-commerce as it is effective as well as a means for them to thrive.


title: E-commerce

text: In 2013, Brazil's e-commerce was growing quickly with retail e-commerce sales expected to grow at a double-digit pace through 2014. By 2016, eMarketer expected retail e-commerce sales in Brazil to reach $17.3 billion. India has an Internet user base of about 460 million as of December 2017. Despite being the third largest user base in the world, the penetration of the Internet is low compared to markets like the United States, United Kingdom or France but is growing at a much faster rate, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-retail activities. The India retail market is expected to rise from 2.5% in 2016 to 5% in 2020.


title: E-commerce

text: The future trends in the GCC countries will be similar to that of the western countries. Despite the forces that push business to adapt e-commerce as a means to sell goods and products, the manner in which customers make purchases is similar in countries from these two regions. For instance, there has been an increased usage of smartphones which comes in conjunction with an increase in the overall internet audience from the regions. Yuldashev writes that consumers are scaling up to more modern technology that allows for mobile marketing.


title: E-commerce

text: However, the percentage of smartphone and internet users who make online purchases is expected to vary in the first few years. It will be independent on the willingness of the people to adopt this new trend (The Statistics Portal). For example, UAE has the greatest smartphone penetration of 73.8 per cent and has 91.9 per cent of its population has access to the internet. On the other hand, smartphone penetration in Europe has been reported to be at 64.7 per cent (The Statistics Portal). Regardless, the disparity in percentage between these regions is expected to level out in future because e-commerce technology is expected to grow to allow for more users.


title: E-commerce

text: The e-commerce business within these two regions will result in competition. Government bodies at the country level will enhance their measures and strategies to ensure sustainability and consumer protection (Krings, et al.). These increased measures will raise the environmental and social standards in the countries, factors that will determine the success of the e-commerce market in these countries. For example, an adoption of tough sanctions will make it difficult for companies to enter the e-commerce market while lenient sanctions will allow ease of companies. As such, the future trends between GCC countries and the Western countries will be independent of these sanctions (Krings, et al.). These countries need to make rational conclusions in coming up with effective sanctions.


title: E-commerce

text: The rate of growth of the number of internet users in the Arab countries has been rapid – 13.1% in 2015. A significant portion of the e-commerce market in the Middle East comprises people in the 30–34 year age group. Egypt has the largest number of internet users in the region, followed by Saudi Arabia and Morocco; these constitute 3/4th of the region's share. Yet, internet penetration is low: 35% in Egypt and 65% in Saudi Arabia.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce has become an important tool for small and large businesses worldwide, not only to sell to customers, but also to engage them.


title: E-commerce

text: Cross-border e-Commerce is also an essential field for e-Commerce businesses.  It has responded to the trend of globalization. It shows that numerous firms have opened up new businesses, expanded new markets, and overcome trade barriers; more and more enterprises have started exploring the cross-border cooperation field. In addition, compared with traditional cross-border trade, the information on cross-border e-commerce is more concealed. In the era of globalization, cross-border e-commerce for inter-firm companies means the activities, interactions, or social relations of two or more e-commerce enterprises. However, the success of cross-border e-commerce promotes the development of small and medium-sized firms, and it has finally become a new transaction mode. It has helped the companies solve financial problems and realize the reasonable allocation of resources field. SMEs ( small and medium enterprises) can also precisely match the demand and supply in the market, having the industrial chain majorization and creating more revenues for companies.


title: E-commerce

text: Mobile devices are playing an increasing role in the mix of e-commerce, this is also commonly called mobile commerce, or m-commerce. In 2014, one estimate saw purchases made on mobile devices making up 25% of the market by 2017.


title: E-commerce

text: For traditional businesses, one research stated that information technology and cross-border e-commerce is a good opportunity for the rapid development and growth of enterprises. Many companies have invested an enormous volume of investment in mobile applications. The DeLone and McLean Model stated that three perspectives contribute to a successful e-business: information system quality, service quality and users' satisfaction. There is no limit of time and space, there are more opportunities to reach out to customers around the world, and to cut down unnecessary intermediate links, thereby reducing the cost price, and can benefit from one on one large customer data analysis, to achieve a high degree of personal customization strategic plan, in order to fully enhance the core competitiveness of the products in the company.


title: E-commerce

text: Modern 3D graphics technologies, such as Facebook 3D Posts, are considered by some social media marketers and advertisers as a preferable way to promote consumer goods than static photos, and some brands like Sony are already paving the way for augmented reality commerce. Wayfair now lets you inspect a 3D version of its furniture in a home setting before buying.


title: E-commerce

text: Logistics in e-commerce mainly concerns fulfillment. Online markets and retailers have to find the best possible way to fill orders and deliver products. Small companies usually control their own logistic operation because they do not have the ability to hire an outside company. Most large companies hire a fulfillment service that takes care of a company's logistic needs.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce markets are growing at noticeable rates. The online market is expected to grow by 56% in 2015–2020. In 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 4.891 trillion US dollars in 2021. Traditional markets are only expected 2% growth during the same time. Brick and mortar retailers are struggling because of online retailer's ability to offer lower prices and higher efficiency. Many larger retailers are able to maintain a presence offline and online by linking physical and online offerings.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce allows customers to overcome geographical barriers and allows them to purchase products anytime and from anywhere. Online and traditional markets have different strategies for conducting business. Traditional retailers offer fewer assortment of products because of shelf space where, online retailers often hold no inventory but send customer orders directly to the manufacture. The pricing strategies are also different for traditional and online retailers. Traditional retailers base their prices on store traffic and the cost to keep inventory. Online retailers base prices on the speed of delivery.


title: E-commerce

text: There are two ways for marketers to conduct business through e-commerce: fully online or online along with a brick and mortar store. Online marketers can offer lower prices, greater product selection, and high efficiency rates. Many customers prefer online markets if the products can be delivered quickly at relatively low price. However, online retailers cannot offer the physical experience that traditional retailers can. It can be difficult to judge the quality of a product without the physical experience, which may cause customers to experience product or seller uncertainty. Another issue regarding the online market is concerns about the security of online transactions. Many customers remain loyal to well-known retailers because of this issue.


title: E-commerce

text: Security is a primary problem for e-commerce in developed and developing countries. E-commerce security is protecting businesses' websites and customers from unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction. The type of threats include: malicious codes, unwanted programs (ad ware, spyware), phishing, hacking, and cyber vandalism. E-commerce websites use different tools to avert security threats. These tools include firewalls, encryption software, digital certificates, and passwords.


title: E-commerce

text: For a long time, companies had been troubled by the gap between the benefits which supply chain technology has and the solutions to deliver those benefits. However, the emergence of e-commerce has provided a more practical and effective way of delivering the benefits of the new supply chain technologies.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce has the capability to integrate all inter-company and intra-company functions, meaning that the three flows (physical flow, financial flow and information flow) of the supply chain could be also affected by e-commerce. The affections on physical flows improved the way of product and inventory movement level for companies. For the information flows, e-commerce optimized the capacity of information processing than companies used to have, and for the financial flows, e-commerce allows companies to have more efficient payment and settlement solutions.


title: E-commerce

text: In addition, e-commerce has a more sophisticated level of impact on supply chains: Firstly, the performance gap will be eliminated since companies can identify gaps between different levels of supply chains by electronic means of solutions; Secondly, as a result of e-commerce emergence, new capabilities such implementing ERP systems, like SAP ERP, Xero, or Megaventory, have helped companies to manage operations with customers and suppliers. Yet these new capabilities are still not fully exploited. Thirdly, technology companies would keep investing on new e-commerce software solutions as they are expecting investment return. Fourthly, e-commerce would help to solve many aspects of issues that companies may feel difficult to cope with, such as political barriers or cross-country changes. Finally, e-commerce provides companies a more efficient and effective way to collaborate with each other within the supply chain.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce helps create new job opportunities due to information related services, software app and digital products. It also causes job losses. The areas with the greatest predicted job-loss are retail, postal, and travel agencies. The development of e-commerce will create jobs that require highly skilled workers to manage large amounts of information, customer demands, and production processes. In contrast, people with poor technical skills cannot enjoy the wages welfare. On the other hand, because e-commerce requires sufficient stocks that could be delivered to customers in time, the warehouse becomes an important element. Warehouse needs more staff to manage, supervise and organize, thus the condition of warehouse environment will be concerned by employees.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce brings convenience for customers as they do not have to leave home and only need to browse websites online, especially for buying products which are not sold in nearby shops. It could help customers buy a wider range of products and save customers' time. Consumers also gain power through online shopping. They are able to research products and compare prices among retailers. Thanks to the practice of user-generated ratings and reviews from companies like Bazaarvoice, Trustpilot, and Yelp, customers can also see what other people think of a product, and decide before buying if they want to spend money on it. Also, online shopping often provides sales promotion or discounts code, thus it is more price effective for customers. Moreover, e-commerce provides products' detailed information; even the in-store staff cannot offer such detailed explanation. Customers can also review and track the order history online.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce technologies cut transaction costs by allowing both manufactures and consumers to skip through the intermediaries. This is achieved through by extending the search area best price deals and by group purchase. The success of e-commerce in urban and regional levels depend on how the local firms and consumers have adopted to e-commerce.


title: E-commerce

text: However, e-commerce lacks human interaction for customers, especially who prefer face-to-face connection. Customers are also concerned with the security of online transactions and tend to remain loyal to well-known retailers. In recent years, clothing retailers such as Tommy Hilfiger have started adding Virtual Fit platforms to their e-commerce sites to reduce the risk of customers buying the wrong sized clothes, although these vary greatly in their fit for purpose. When the customer regret the purchase of a product, it involves returning goods and refunding process. This process is inconvenient as customers need to pack and post the goods. If the products are expensive, large or fragile, it refers to safety issues.


title: E-commerce

text: In 2018, E-commerce generated of container cardboard in North America, an increase from ) in 2017. Only 35 percent of North American cardboard manufacturing capacity is from recycled content. The recycling rate in Europe is 80 percent and Asia is 93 percent. Amazon, the largest user of boxes, has a strategy to cut back on packing material and has reduced packaging material used by 19 percent by weight since 2016. Amazon is requiring retailers to manufacture their product packaging in a way that doesn't require additional shipping packaging. Amazon also has an 85-person team researching ways to reduce and improve their packaging and shipping materials.


title: E-commerce

text: Accelerated movement of packages around the world includes accelerated movement of living things, with all its attendant risks. Weeds, pests, and diseases all sometimes travel in packages of seeds. Some of these packages are part of brushing manipulation of e-commerce reviews.


title: E-commerce

text: E-commerce has been cited as a major force for the failure of major U.S. retailers in a trend frequently referred to as a "retail apocalypse." The rise of e-commerce outlets like Amazon has made it harder for traditional retailers to attract customers to their stores and forced companies to change their sales strategies. Many companies have turned to sales promotions and increased digital efforts to lure shoppers while shutting down brick-and-mortar locations. The trend has forced some traditional retailers to shutter its brick and mortar operations.


title: E-commerce

text: In March 2020, global retail website traffic hit 14.3 billion visits signifying an unprecedented growth of e-commerce during the lockdown of 2020. Later studies show that online sales increased by 25% and online grocery shopping increased by over 100% during the crisis in the United States. Meanwhile, as many as 29% of surveyed shoppers state that they will never go back to shopping in person again; in the UK, 43% of consumers state that they expect to keep on shopping the same way even after the lockdown is over.


title: E-commerce

text: Retail sales of e-commerce shows that COVID-19 has a significant impact on e-commerce and its sales are expected to reach $6.5 trillion by 2023.


title: Pope Francis

text: Pope Francis (; ; ; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the 8th century.


title: Pope Francis

text: Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio worked for a time as a bouncer and a janitor as a young man before training to be a chemist and working as a technician in a food science laboratory. After recovering from a severe illness, he was inspired to join the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1958. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina. He became the archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He led the Argentine Church during the December 2001 riots in Argentina. The administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner considered him to be a political rival. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. Throughout his public life, Francis has been noted for his humility, emphasis on God's mercy, international visibility as pope, concern for the poor, and commitment to . He is credited with having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors, for instance choosing to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse rather than in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace used by previous popes.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis maintains the views of the church regarding abortion, clerical celibacy, and the ordination of women, but has initiated dialogue on the possibility of deaconesses and has made women full members of dicasteries in the Roman Curia. He maintains that the church should be more open and welcoming for members of the LGBT community. Francis is an outspoken critic of unbridled capitalism and free market economics, consumerism, and overdevelopment; he advocates taking action on climate change, a focus of his papacy with the promulgation of "Laudato si'". In international diplomacy, he helped to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, supported the cause of refugees during the European and Central American migrant crises, and made a deal with the People's Republic of China to define how much influence the nation has in appointing their Catholic bishops. He has faced criticism from theological conservatives on many questions, especially what some interpret as his suggestion in a footnote of "Amoris Laetitia" that divorced and remarried Catholics may be admitted to receive the Eucharist.


title: Pope Francis

text: Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on 17 December 1936 in Flores, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires. He was the eldest of five children of Mario José Bergoglio (1908–1959) and Regina María Sívori (1911–1981). Mario Bergoglio was an Italian immigrant accountant born in Portacomaro (Province of Asti) in Italy's Piedmont region. Regina Sívori was a housewife born in Buenos Aires to a family of northern Italian (Piedmontese-Genoese) origin. Mario José's family left Italy in 1929 to escape the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini. According to María Elena Bergoglio (born 1948), the pope's only living sibling, they did not emigrate for economic reasons. His other siblings were Alberto Horacio (1942–2010), Oscar Adrián (1938–deceased) and Marta Regina (1940–2007). Two great-nephews, Antonio and Joseph, died in a traffic collision. His niece, Cristina Bergoglio, is a painter based in Madrid, Spain.


title: Pope Francis

text: In the sixth grade, Bergoglio attended Wilfrid Barón de los Santos Ángeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco, in Ramos Mejía, Buenos Aires Province. He attended the technical secondary school Escuela Técnica Industrial N° 27 Hipólito Yrigoyen, named after a past Argentine president, and graduated with a chemical technician's diploma (not a master's degree in chemistry, as some media outlets incorrectly reported). In that capacity, he spent several years working in the food section of Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory, where he worked under Esther Ballestrino. Prior to working as a chemical technician, Bergoglio had also worked as a bar bouncer and as a janitor sweeping floors.


title: Pope Francis

text: When he was 21 years old, he suffered from life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts. He had part of a lung excised shortly afterwards. Bergoglio has been a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo de Almagro football club. Bergoglio is also a fan of the films of Tita Merello, neorealism, and tango dancing, with a fondness for the traditional music of Argentina and Uruguay known as the "milonga".


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio found his vocation to the priesthood while he was on his way to celebrate the Spring Day. He passed by a church to go to confession, and was inspired by the priest. Bergoglio studied at the archdiocesan seminary, Inmaculada Concepción Seminary, in Villa Devoto, Buenos Aires, and, after three years, entered the Society of Jesus as a novice on 11 March 1958. Bergoglio has said that, as a young seminarian, he had a crush on a girl he met and briefly doubted about continuing the religious career. As a Jesuit novice he studied humanities in Santiago, Chile. After his novitiate in the Society of Jesus, Bergoglio officially became a Jesuit on 12 March 1960, when he made the religious profession of the initial, perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience of a member of the order.


title: Pope Francis

text: In 1960, Bergoglio obtained a licentiate in philosophy from the Colegio Máximo de San José in San Miguel, Buenos Aires Province. He taught literature and psychology at the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción, a high school in Santa Fe, from 1964 to 1965. In 1966, he taught the same courses at the Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires.


title: Pope Francis

text: In 1967 Bergoglio began his theological studies at Facultades de Filosofía y Teología de San Miguel and on 13 December 1969 was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Ramón José Castellano. He served as the master of novices for the province there and became a professor of theology.


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio completed his final stage of spiritual training as a Jesuit, tertianship, at Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and took final, solemn vows as a Jesuit, including the fourth vow of obedience to missioning by the pope, on 22 April 1973. He was named provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina that July, for a six-year term which ended in 1979. In 1973, shortly after being named provincial superior, he had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but his stay was shortened by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. After the completion of his term of office, in 1980 he was named the rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel where he had studied. Before taking up this new appointment, he spent the first three months of 1980 in Ireland to learn English, staying at the Jesuit Centre at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. He served at San Miguel for six years until 1986 when, at the discretion of Jesuit superior-general Peter Hans Kolvenbach, he was replaced by someone more in tune with the worldwide trend in the Society of Jesus toward emphasizing social justice, rather than his emphasis on popular religiosity and direct pastoral work.


title: Pope Francis

text: He spent several months at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt, Germany, considering possible dissertation topics. He settled on exploring the work of the German / Italian theologian Romano Guardini, particularly his study of 'Contrast' published in his 1925 work "Der Gegensatz". However, he was to return to Argentina prematurely to serve as a confessor and spiritual director to the Jesuit community in Córdoba. It was believed that while in Germany, he saw the painting of Mary, Untier of Knots in Augsburg and brought a copy of the painting to Argentina, but in an interview for the German newsweekly "Die Zeit" in 2017, Pope Francis stated that he had never been to Augsburg As a student at the Salesian school, Bergoglio was mentored by Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Stefan Czmil. Bergoglio often rose hours before his classmates to serve Divine Liturgy for Czmil.


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio was asked in 1992 by Jesuit authorities not to reside in Jesuit houses, because of continued tensions with Jesuit leaders and scholars, a sense of Bergoglio's "dissent," views of his Catholic orthodoxy and his opposition to theology of liberation, and his work as auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. As a bishop he was no longer subject to his Jesuit superior. From then on, he did not visit Jesuit houses and was in "virtual estrangement from the Jesuits" until after his election as pope.


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and consecrated on 27 June 1992 as titular bishop of Auca, with Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, archbishop of Buenos Aires, serving as principal consecrator. He chose as his episcopal motto "Miserando atque eligendo". It is drawn from Saint Bede's homily on Matthew 9:9–13: "because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him".


title: Pope Francis

text: On 3 June 1997, Bergoglio was appointed coadjutor archbishop of Buenos Aires with right of succession. Upon Quarracino's death on 28 February 1998, Bergoglio became metropolitan archbishop of Buenos Aires. In that role, Bergoglio created new parishes and restructured the archdiocese administrative offices, led pro-life initiatives, and created a commission on divorces. One of Bergoglio's major initiatives as archbishop was to increase the church's presence in the slums of Buenos Aires. Under his leadership, the number of priests assigned to work in the slums doubled. This work led to him being called the "Slum Bishop".


title: Pope Francis

text: Early in his time as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio sold off the archdiocese's shares in multiple banks and turned its accounts into those of a normal customer in international banks. The shares in banks had led the local church to a propensity towards high spending, and the archdiocese was nearing bankruptcy as a result. As a normal customer of the bank, the church was forced into a higher fiscal discipline.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 6 November 1998, while remaining archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was named ordinary for those Eastern Catholics in Argentina who lacked a prelate of their own church. Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that Bergoglio understands the liturgy, rites, and spirituality of Shevchuk's Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and always "took care of our Church in Argentina" as ordinary for Eastern Catholics during his time as archbishop of Buenos Aires.


title: Pope Francis

text: In 2000, Bergoglio was the only church official to reconcile with Jerónimo Podestá, a former bishop who had been suspended as a priest after opposing the Argentine Revolution military dictatorship in 1972. He defended Podestá's wife from Vatican attacks on their marriage. That same year, Bergoglio said the Argentine Catholic Church needed "to put on garments of public penance for the sins committed during the years of the dictatorship" in the 1970s, during the Dirty War.


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio made it his custom to celebrate the Holy Thursday ritual washing of feet in places such as jails, hospitals, retirement homes or slums. In 2007, just two days after Benedict XVI issued new rules for using the liturgical forms that preceded the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Bergoglio established a fixed place for a weekly Mass in this extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. It was celebrated weekly.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 8 November 2005, Bergoglio was elected president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference for a three-year term (2005–08). He was reelected to another three-year term on 11 November 2008. He remained a member of that commission's permanent governing body, president of its committee for the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, and a member of its liturgy committee for the care of shrines. While head of the Argentine Catholic bishops' conference, Bergoglio issued a collective apology for his church's failure to protect people from the Junta during the Dirty War. When he turned 75 in December 2011, Bergoglio submitted his resignation as archbishop of Buenos Aires to Pope Benedict XVI as required by canon law. Still, as he had no coadjutor archbishop, he stayed in office, waiting for an eventual replacement appointed by the Vatican.


title: Pope Francis

text: At the consistory of 21 February 2001, Archbishop Bergoglio was created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II with the title of cardinal priest of San Roberto Bellarmino, a church served by Jesuits and named for one; he was formally installed in that church the following 14 October. When he traveled to Rome for the ceremony, he and his sister María Elena visited the village in northern Italy where their father was born. As cardinal, Bergoglio was appointed to five administrative positions in the Roman Curia. He was a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Congregation for the Clergy, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Commission for Latin America. Later that year, when Cardinal Edward Egan returned to New York following the September 11 attacks, Bergoglio replaced him as relator (recording secretary) in the Synod of Bishops, and, according to the "Catholic Herald", created "a favourable impression as a man open to communion and dialogue".


title: Pope Francis

text: Cardinal Bergoglio became known for personal humility, doctrinal conservatism, and a commitment to social justice. A simple lifestyle contributed to his reputation for humility. He lived in a small apartment, rather than in the elegant bishop's residence in the suburb of Olivos. He took public transportation and cooked his own meals. He limited his time in Rome to "lightning visits". He was known to be devoted to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and he enclosed a small picture of her in the letters he wrote, calling her "a great missionary saint".


title: Pope Francis

text: After Pope John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, Bergoglio attended his funeral and was considered one of the "papabile" for succession to the papacy. He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. In the "National Catholic Reporter", John L. Allen Jr. reported that Bergoglio was a frontrunner in the 2005 conclave. In September 2005, the Italian magazine "Limes" published claims that Bergoglio had been the runner-up and main challenger to Cardinal Ratzinger at that conclave and that he had received 40 votes in the third ballot, but fell back to 26 at the fourth and decisive ballot. The claims were based on a diary purportedly belonging to an anonymous cardinal who had been present at the conclave. According to the Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli, this number of votes had no precedent for a Latin American "papabile". "La Stampa" reported that Bergoglio was in close contention with Ratzinger during the election, until he made an emotional plea that the cardinals should not vote for him. According to Tornielli, Bergoglio made this request to prevent the conclave from delaying too much in the election of a pope.


title: Pope Francis

text: As a cardinal, Bergoglio was associated with Communion and Liberation, a Catholic evangelical lay movement of the type known as associations of the faithful. He sometimes made appearances at the annual gathering known as the Rimini Meeting held during the late summer months in Italy. In 2005, Cardinal Bergoglio authorized the request for beatification—the third step towards sainthood—for six members of the Pallottine community murdered in the San Patricio Church massacre. At the same time, Bergoglio ordered an investigation into the murders themselves, which had been widely blamed on the National Reorganization Process, the military junta that ruled Argentina at the time.


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio was the subject of allegations regarding the Navy's kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, in May 1976, during Argentina's Dirty War. He feared for the priests' safety and had tried to change their work prior to their arrest; however, contrary to reports, he never tried to throw them out of the Jesuit order. In 2005, Myriam Bregman, a human rights lawyer, filed a criminal complaint against Bergoglio, as superior in the Society of Jesus of Argentina, accusing him of involvement in the kidnapping. Her complaint did not specify how Bergoglio was involved; Bergoglio's spokesman flatly denied the allegations. The complaint was ultimately dismissed. The priests were tortured, but were found alive five months later, drugged and semi-naked. Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the authorities that he endorsed their work. Yorio, who died in 2000, said in a 1999 interview that he believed that Bergoglio did nothing "to free us, in fact just the opposite". Jalics initially refused to discuss the complaint after moving into seclusion in a German monastery. However, two days after the election of Francis, Jalics issued a statement confirming the kidnapping and attributing the cause to a former lay colleague who became a guerrilla, was captured, then named Yorio and Jalics when interrogated. The following week, Jalics issued a second, clarifying statement: "It is wrong to assert that our capture took place at the initiative of Father Bergoglio (…) the fact is, Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio."


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio told his authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, that after the priests' imprisonment, he worked behind the scenes for their release; Bergoglio's intercession with dictator Jorge Rafael Videla on their behalf may have saved their lives. Bergoglio also told Rubin that he had often sheltered people from the dictatorship on church property, and once gave his own identity papers to a man who looked like him, so he could flee Argentina. The interview with Rubin, reflected in the biography "El jesuita", is the only time Bergoglio has spoken to the press about those events. Alicia Oliveira, a former Argentine judge, has also reported that Bergoglio helped people flee Argentina during the rule of the junta. Since Francis became pope, Gonzalo Mosca and José Caravias have related to journalists accounts of how Bergoglio helped them flee the Argentine dictatorship.


title: Pope Francis

text: Oliveira described the future pope as "anguished" and "very critical of the dictatorship" during the Dirty War. Oliveira met with him at the time and urged Bergoglio to speak out—he told her that "he couldn't. That it wasn't an easy thing to do." Artist and human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said: "Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship. …Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship." Graciela Fernández Meijide, member of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, also said that there was no proof linking Bergoglio with the dictatorship. She told the "Clarín" newspaper: "There is no information and Justice couldn't prove it. I was in the APDH during all the dictatorship years and I received hundreds of testimonies. Bergoglio was never mentioned. It was the same in the CONADEP. Nobody mentioned him as instigator or as anything." Ricardo Lorenzetti, President of the Argentine Supreme Court, also has said that Bergoglio is "completely innocent" of the accusations. Historian Uki Goñi pointed that, during early 1976, the military junta still had a good image among society, and that the scale of the political repression was not known until much later; Bergoglio would have had little reason to suspect that the detention of Yorio and Jalics could end up in their deaths.


title: Pope Francis

text: When Bergoglio became pope, an alleged photo of him giving the sacramental bread to dictator Jorge Rafael Videla became popular in social networks. It has also been used by the newspaper "Página/12". The photo was soon proved to be false. It was revealed that the priest, whose face is not visible in the photo, was Carlos Berón de Astrada. The photo was taken at the church "Pequeña Obra de la Divina Providencia Don Orione" in 1990, not during the Dirty War, and after Videla's presidential pardon. The photo was produced by the agency AFP and it was initially published by the "Crónica" newspaper.


title: Pope Francis

text: Fernando de la Rúa replaced Carlos Menem as president of Argentina in 1999. As an archbishop, Bergoglio celebrated the annual Mass at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral on the "First National Government" holiday, 25 May. In 2000, Bergoglio criticized the perceived apathy of society. Argentina faced an economic depression at the time, and the Catholic Church criticized the fiscal austerity of the government, which increased poverty. De la Rúa asked the church to promote a dialogue between the leaders of economic and political sectors to find a solution for the crisis. He claims that he talked with Bergoglio and proposed to take part in the meeting, but Bergoglio would have told him that the meeting was canceled because of a misunderstanding by De la Rúa's assistant, who may have declined the president's assistance. Bishop Jorge Casaretto considers it unlikely, as De la Rúa only made the request in newspaper interviews, but never made a formal request to the church.


title: Pope Francis

text: The Justicialist Party won the 2001 elections and got the majority in the Congress, and appointed Ramón Puerta as president of the Senate. As vice president Carlos Álvarez resigned shortly before, this left an opposing party second in the order of precedence. Bergoglio asked for an interview with Puerta, and had a positive impression of him. Puerta told him that the Justicialist party was not plotting to oust De la Rúa, and promised to help the president promote the laws that may be required.


title: Pope Francis

text: During police repression of the riots of December 2001, he contacted the Ministry of the Interior and asked that the police distinguish rioters and vandals from peaceful protesters.


title: Pope Francis

text: When Bergoglio celebrated Mass at the cathedral for the 2004 "First National Government" holiday, President Néstor Kirchner attended and heard Bergoglio request more political dialogue, reject intolerance, and criticize exhibitionism and strident announcements. Kirchner celebrated the national day elsewhere the following year and the Mass in the cathedral was suspended. In 2006, Bergoglio helped the fellow Jesuit Joaquín Piña to win the elections in the Misiones Province and prevent an amendment of the local constitution that would allow indefinite re-elections. Kirchner intended to use that project to start similar amendments at other provinces, and eventually to the national constitution. Kirchner considered Bergoglio as a political rival to the day he died in October 2010. Bergoglio's relations with Kirchner's widow and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have been similarly tense. In 2008, Bergoglio called for national reconciliation during disturbances in the country's agricultural regions, which the government interpreted as a support for anti-government demonstrators. The campaign to enact same-sex marriage legislation was a particularly tense period in their relations.


title: Pope Francis

text: When Bergoglio was elected pope, the initial reactions were mixed. Most of the Argentine society cheered it, but the pro-government newspaper "Página/12" published renewed allegations about the Dirty War, and the president of the National Library described a global conspiracy theory. The president took more than an hour before congratulating the new pope, and only did so in a passing reference within a routine speech. However, due to the pope's popularity in Argentina, Cristina Kirchner made what the political analyst Claudio Fantini called a "Copernican shift" in her relations with him and fully embraced the Francis phenomenon. On the day before his inauguration as pope, Bergoglio, now Francis, had a private meeting with Kirchner. They exchanged gifts and lunched together. This was the new pope's first meeting with a head of state, and there was speculation that the two were mending their relations. "Página/12" removed their controversial articles about Bergoglio, written by Horacio Verbitsky, from their web page, as a result of this change.


title: Pope Francis

text: Elected at 76 years old, Francis was reported to be healthy and his doctors have said his missing lung tissue, removed in his youth, does not significantly affect his health. The only concern would be decreased respiratory reserve if he had a respiratory infection. In the past, one attack of sciatica in 2007 prevented him from attending a consistory and delayed his return to Argentina for several days. Francis is the first Jesuit pope. This was a significant appointment, because of the sometimes tense relations between the Society of Jesus and the Holy See. However, Bergoglio came in second to Cardinal Ratzinger on all the ballots in the 2005 conclave, and at the time appeared as the only other viable candidate.


title: Pope Francis

text: He is also the first from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. Many media reported him as being the first non-European pope, but he is actually the 11th; the previous was Gregory III from Syria, who died in 741. Moreover, although Francis was not born in Europe, he is ethnically European; his father and both of his mother's parents are from northern Italy.


title: Pope Francis

text: As pope, his manner is less formal than that of his immediate predecessors: a style that news coverage has referred to as "no frills", noting that it is "his common touch and accessibility that is proving the greatest inspiration." On the night of his election, he took a bus back to his hotel with the cardinals, rather than be driven in the papal car. The next day, he visited Cardinal Jorge María Mejía in the hospital and chatted with patients and staff. At his first media audience, the Saturday after his election, the pope explained his papal name choice, citing Saint Francis of Assisi as "the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man", and he added "[h]ow I would like a poor Church, and for the poor".


title: Pope Francis

text: In addition to his native Spanish, he speaks fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the "everyday language" of the Holy See) and German. He is also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), French, Portuguese, and English, and he understands the Piedmontese language and some Genoese.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis chose not to live in the official papal residence in the Apostolic Palace, but to remain in the Vatican guest house, in a suite in which he can receive visitors and hold meetings. He is the first pope since Pope Pius X to live outside the papal apartments. Francis still appears at the window of the Apostolic Palace for the Sunday Angelus.


title: Pope Francis

text: As a Jesuit pope, he has been "making clear that a fundamental task of the faithful is not so much to follow rules but to discern what God is calling them to do. He is altering the culture of the clergy, steering away from what he has named as “clericalism” (which dwells on priestly status and authority) and toward an ethic of service (Francis says the church’s shepherds must have the “smell of the sheep,” always staying close to the People of God)."


title: Pope Francis

text: Bergoglio was elected pope on 13 March 2013, the second day of the 2013 papal conclave, taking the papal name Francis. Francis was elected on the fifth ballot of the conclave. The "Habemus papam" announcement was delivered by the cardinal protodeacon, Jean-Louis Tauran. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn later said that Bergoglio was elected following two supernatural signs, one in the conclave and hence confidential, and a Latin-American couple of friends of Schönborn who whispered Bergoglio's name in Schönborn's ear; Schönborn commented "if these people say Bergoglio, that's an indication of the Holy Spirit".


title: Pope Francis

text: Instead of accepting his cardinals' congratulations while seated on the papal throne, Francis received them standing, reportedly an immediate sign of a changing approach to formalities at the Vatican. During his first appearance as pontiff on the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica, he wore a white cassock, not the red, ermine-trimmed mozzetta used by previous popes. He also wore the same iron pectoral cross that he had worn as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rather than the gold one worn by his predecessors.


title: Pope Francis

text: After being elected and choosing his name, his first act was bestowing the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing on thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square. Before blessing the crowd, he asked those in St. Peter's Square to pray for his predecessor, "the bishop emeritus of Rome" Pope Benedict XVI, and for himself as the new "bishop of Rome".


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis held his papal inauguration on 19 March 2013 in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican. He celebrated Mass in the presence of various political and religious leaders from around the world. In his homily Francis focused on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, the liturgical day on which the Mass was celebrated.


title: Pope Francis

text: At his first audience on 16 March 2013, Francis told journalists that he had chosen the name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, and had done so because he was especially concerned for the well-being of the poor. He explained that, as it was becoming clear during the conclave voting that he would be elected the new bishop of Rome, the Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes had embraced him and whispered, "Don't forget the poor", which had made Bergoglio think of the saint. Bergoglio had previously expressed his admiration for St. Francis, explaining that: "He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time. He changed history."


title: Pope Francis

text: This is the first time that a pope has been named "Francis". On the day of his election, the Vatican clarified that his official papal name was "Francis", not "Francis I", i.e. no regnal number is used for him. A Vatican spokesman said that the name would become Francis I if and when there is a Francis II. It is the first time since Lando's 913–914 pontificate that a serving pope holds a name not used by a predecessor.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis also said that some cardinal electors had jokingly suggested to him that he should choose either "Adrian", since Adrian VI had been a reformer of the church, or "Clement" to settle the score with Clement XIV, who had suppressed the Jesuit order. In February 2014, it was reported that Bergoglio, had he been elected in 2005, would have chosen the pontifical name of "John XXIV" in honor of John XXIII. It was said that he told Cardinal Francesco Marchisano: "John, I would have called myself John, like the Good Pope; I would have been completely inspired by him".


title: Pope Francis

text: On 16 March 2013, Francis asked all those in senior positions of the Roman Curia to provisionally continue in office. He named Alfred Xuereb as his personal secretary. On 6 April he named José Rodríguez Carballo as secretary for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, a position that had been vacant for several months. Francis abolished the bonuses paid to Vatican employees upon the election of a new pope, amounting to several million Euros, opting instead to donate the money to charity. He also abolished the €25,000 annual bonus paid to the cardinals serving on the Board of Supervisors for the Vatican bank.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 13 April 2013, he named eight cardinals to a new Council of Cardinal Advisers to advise him on revising the organizational structure of the Roman Curia. The group included several known as critics of Vatican operations and only one member of the Curia. They are Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Vatican City State governorate; Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa from Chile; Oswald Gracias from India; Reinhard Marx from Germany; Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; George Pell from Australia; Seán O'Malley from the United States; and Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga from Honduras. He appointed Bishop Marcello Semeraro secretary for the group and scheduled its first meeting for 1–3 October.


title: Pope Francis

text: In March 2013, 21 British Catholic peers and members of Parliament from all parties asked Francis to allow married men in Great Britain to be ordained as priests, keeping celibacy as the rule for bishops. They asked it on the grounds that it would be anomalous that married Anglican priests can be received into the Catholic Church and ordained as priests, by means of either the Pastoral Provision of 20 June 1980 or the 2009 Anglican ordinariate, but married Catholic men cannot do the same.


title: Pope Francis

text: Fouad Twal, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, included a call in his 2013 Easter homily for the pope to visit Jerusalem. Louis Raphael I, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, asked the pope to visit the "embattled Christian community" in Iraq. In March 2021, Pope Francis went to Iraq on a first-ever papal visit to the diminishing Christian communities of Mesopotamia fallen apart after years of conflict.


title: Pope Francis

text: On the first Holy Thursday following his election, Francis washed and kissed the feet of ten male and two female juvenile offenders, not all Catholic, aged from 14 to 21, imprisoned at Rome's Casal del Marmo detention facility, telling them the ritual of foot washing is a sign that he is at their service. This was the first time that a pope had included women in this ritual; although he had already done so when he was archbishop. One of the male and one of the female prisoners were Muslim.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 31 March 2013, Francis used his first Easter homily to make a plea for peace throughout the world, specifically mentioning the Middle East, Africa, and North and South Korea. He also spoke out against those who give in to "easy gain" in a world filled with greed, and made a plea for humanity to become a better guardian of creation by protecting the environment. He said that "[w]e ask the risen Jesus, who turns death into life, to change hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness, war into peace." Although the Vatican had prepared greetings in 65 languages, Francis chose not to read them. According to the Vatican, the pope "at least for now, feels at ease using Italian, the everyday language of the Holy See".


title: Pope Francis

text: In 2013, Francis initially reaffirmed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's program to reform the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious, initiated under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. "The New York Times" reported that the Vatican had formed the opinion in 2012 that the sisters' group was tinged with feminist influences, focused too much on ending social and economic injustice and not enough on stopping abortion, and permitted speakers at its meetings who questioned church doctrine. However, in April 2015 the investigation was brought to a close. While the timing of the closure may have anticipated a visit by Francis to the U.S. in September 2015, it was noted that the sisters' emphasis is close to that of Francis.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 12 May, Francis carried out his first canonizations of candidates approved for sainthood during the reign of Benedict XVI: the first Colombian saint, Laura of Saint Catherine of Siena, the second female Mexican saint, María Guadalupe García Zavala, both of the 20th century, and the 813 15th-century Martyrs of Otranto. He said: "While we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, ask God to support the many Christians who still suffer from violence and give them the courage and fate and respond to evil with goodness."


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis has overseen synods on the family (2014), on youth (2018), and on the church in the Amazon region (2019). In 2019 Francis's apostolic constitution "Episcopalis communio" allowed that the final document of a synod may become magisterial teaching simply with papal approval. The constitution also allowed for laity to contribute input directly to the synod's secretary general. Some analysts see the creation of a truly synodal church as likely to become the greatest contribution of Francis's papacy.


title: Pope Francis

text: A February 2014 survey by the World Values Survey cited in "The Washington Post" and "Time" shows how the unity Francis had created could be challenged. Although views about Francis personally were favorable, many Catholics disagreed with at least some of his teachings. The survey found that members of the Catholic Church are deeply divided over abortion, artificial contraception, divorce, the ordination of women, and married priests. In the same month Francis asked parishes to provide answers to an official questionnaire described as a "much broader consultation than just a survey" regarding opinions among the laity. He continued to assert Catholic doctrine, in less dramatic tone than his recent predecessors, who maintained that the Catholic Church is not a democracy of popular opinion.


title: Pope Francis

text: Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University wrote of the survey Francis initiated, "it's not a survey in any sense that a social scientist would recognize." Woodhead said that many ordinary Catholics would have difficulty understanding theological jargon there. Nonetheless, she suspected the survey might be influential.


title: Pope Francis

text: The Catholic Church in England and Wales had refused to publish results of this survey; a church spokesman said a senior Vatican official had expressly asked for summaries to remain confidential, and that orders had come from the pope that the information should not be made public until after October. This disappointed many reformers who hoped the laity would be more involved in decision-making. Some other Catholic churches, for example in Germany and Austria, published summaries of the responses to the survey, which showed a wide gap between church teaching and the behavior of ordinary Catholics.


title: Pope Francis

text: In a column he wrote for the Vatican's semi-official newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano", the then-Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, American cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, who has a long-standing reputation as one of the church's most vocal conservative hard-liners, said that Francis opposed both abortion and gay marriage. The Vatican's chief spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, also noted in the Vatican press office during the 2014 consistory meetings that Francis and Cardinal Walter Kasper would not change or redefine any dogmas pertaining to church theology on doctrinal matters.


title: Pope Francis

text: In the first months of Francis's papacy, the Institute for the Works of Religion, informally known as the Vatican Bank, said that it would become more transparent in its financial dealings There had long been allegations of corruption and money laundering connected with the bank. Francis appointed a commission to advise him about reform of the Bank, and the finance consulting firm Promontory Financial Group was assigned to carry out a comprehensive investigation of all customer contacts of the bank on these facts. Because of this affair the Promoter of Justice at the Vatican Tribunal applied a letter rogatory for the first time in the history of the Republic of Italy at the beginning of August 2013. In January 2014, Francis replaced four of the five cardinal overseers of the Vatican Bank, who had been confirmed in their positions in the final days of Benedict XVI's papacy. Lay experts and clerics were looking into how the bank was run. Ernst von Freyberg was put in charge. Moneyval feels more reform is needed, and Francis may be willing to close the bank if the reforms prove too difficult. There is uncertainty how far reforms can succeed.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 29 June 2013, Francis published the encyclical "Lumen fidei", which was largely the work of Benedict XVI but awaiting a final draft at his retirement. On 24 November 2013, Francis published his first major letter as pope, the apostolic exhortation "Evangelii gaudium", which he described as the programmatic of his papacy. On 18 June 2015, he published his first own, original encyclical "Laudato si'" concerning care for the planet. On 8 April 2016, Francis published his second apostolic exhortation, "Amoris laetitia", remarking on love within the family. Controversy arose at the end of 2016 when four cardinals formally asked Francis for clarifications, particularly on the issue of giving communion to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.


title: Pope Francis

text: His "motu proprios" include "Ai nostri tempi" and "De concordia inter codices". Francis issued another titled "Maiorem hac dilectionem" which created a new path towards canonization for certain causes.


title: Pope Francis

text: He established two new Secretariats (top-level departments) in the Roman Curia: the Secretariat for the Economy, and the Secretariat for Communications. He simplified the process for declaring matrimonial nullity.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 8 December 2017, Francis signed a new apostolic constitution on ecclesiastical universities and faculties "Veritatis gaudium", published 29 January 2018.


title: Pope Francis

text: A further Apostolic Exhortation, "Gaudete et exsultate" ("Rejoice and be glad"), was published on 19 March 2018, dealing with "the call to holiness in today's world" for all persons. He counters contemporary versions of the gnostic and Pelagian heresies and describes how Jesus' beatitudes call people to "go against the flow".


title: Pope Francis

text: In February 2019, Francis acknowledged that priests and bishops were sexually abusing religious sisters. He addressed this and the clergy sex abuse scandal by convening a summit on clergy sexual abuse in Rome 21–24 February 2019. As a follow-up to that summit, on 9 May 2019 Francis promulgated the "motu proprio" "Vos estis lux mundi" which specified responsibilities, including reporting directly to the Holy See on bishops and on one's superior, while simultaneously involving another bishop in the archdiocese of the accused bishop.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 30 September 2020, he published the apostolic letter "Scripturae sacrae affectus" to celebrate the 16th centenary of the death of Jerome.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 4 October 2020 on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Francis published the encyclical "Fratelli tutti" on fraternity and social friendship, using St. Francis's own words to describe our universal brotherhood and sisterhood.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 8 December 2020 on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Francis published the apostolic letter "Patris corde" ("With a Father's Heart"). To mark the occasion, the Pope proclaimed a "Year of Saint Joseph" from 8 December 2020, to 8 December 2021 on the 150th Anniversary of the Proclamation of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church.


title: Pope Francis

text: Pope Francis issued the "motu proprio" "Traditionis custodes" on 16 July 2021. The document abrogated the permissions for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass previously established by Benedict XVI in the 2007 "Summorum Pontificum", with "Traditionis custodes" instituting increased restrictions on the use of the 1962 Roman Missal. Pope Francis stated in a letter accompanying the "motu proprio" that emphasizing the Mass of Paul VI would bring "unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite." On 11 February, Pope Francis met with two priests from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP) and reassured them that "Traditionis Custodes" did not affect their community and gave them permission, in writing, to use all the liturgical books of 1962. He also implied that "Traditionis Custodes" did not apply to all traditional Catholic communities, not just the FSSP.


title: Pope Francis

text: Pope Francis continued in the tradition of the Second Vatican Council and of the papacies since the Council in promoting ecumenism with other Christian denominations, as well as encouraging dialogue with leaders of other religions; he has also supported peace with those claiming no religious belief.


title: Pope Francis

text: In January 2014, Francis said that he would appoint fewer monsignors and only assign those honored to the lowest of the three surviving ranks of monsignor, chaplain of His Holiness. It would be awarded only to diocesan priests at least 65 years old. During his 15 years as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis never sought the title for any of his priests. It is believed he associates it with clerical careerism and hierarchy, though he did not apply this restriction to clergy working in the Roman Curia or diplomatic corps, where careerism is an even greater concern.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis presided over the first canonizations of his pontificate on 12 May 2013 in which he canonized the Martyrs of Otranto. Antonio Primaldo and his 812 companions who had been executed by the Ottomans in 1480, as well as the religious sisters Laura of St. Catherine of Siena and María Guadalupe García Zavala – in this first canonization he surpassed the record of Pope John Paul II in canonizing the most saints in a pontificate. Francis approved the equipollent canonization of Angela of Foligno the following 9 October and then the Jesuit Peter Faber the following 17 December.


title: Pope Francis

text: The pope approved further equipollent canonizations on 3 April 2014 for the Jesuit José de Anchieta as well as the Ursuline nun Marie of the Incarnation and bishop François de Laval. Francis canonized his two predecessors John XXIII and John Paul II on 27 April 2014 and canonized six additional saints the following 23 November. The pope canonized Joseph Vaz on his visit to Sri Lanka on 14 January 2015 and canonized a further four saints on the following 17 May; he canonized Junípero Serra on 23 September while visiting the United States and then canonized four saints on 18 October including the first married couple to be named as saints. Francis canonized Maria Elisabeth Hesselblad and Stanislaus Papczyński on 5 June 2016 and then canonized Teresa of Calcutta on 4 September; he canonized seven additional saints on 16 October. The pope canonized the two child visionaries Francisco and Jacinta Marto during his visit to Fátima in mid-2017 and canonized 35 additional saints on 15 October. Francis recognized seven saints on 14 October 2018, chief among them, his predecessor Pope Paul VI and Óscar Romero. Francis later confirmed the equipollent canonization for Bartholomew of Braga in mid-2019. On 13 October 2019, Francis canonized five new saints, including Cardinal John Henry Newman. The pope confirmed the equipollent canonization for Margherita della Metola on 24 April 2021.


title: Pope Francis

text: The pope has also continued the practice of having beatifications celebrated in the place of the individual's origin though has presided over beatifications himself on three occasions: for Paul Yun Ji-Chung and 123 companions on 16 August 2014, his predecessor Pope Paul VI on 19 October 2014, and two Colombian martyrs on 8 September 2017. The pope has approved beatifications for a range of men and women including the likes of Álvaro del Portillo of Opus Dei (27 September 2014), the martyred archbishop Óscar Romero (23 May 2015), the prominent Polish cardinal Stefan Wyszyński (12 September 2021), and several large groups of Spanish martyrs.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 21 February 2015, Francis signed a decree naming Saint Gregory of Narek as the 36th Doctor of the Church; he formally conferred the title upon the saint at a ceremony held in Saint Peter's Basilica on 12 April 2015 with delegations from the Armenian Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church present. On 20 January 2022, Francis provided his approval to the suggestion to name Saint Irenaeus of Lyon as the 37th Doctor of the Church, formally conferring the title upon him, along with the supplementary title "Doctor unitatis" ("Doctor of Unity") in a decree issued on 21 January.


title: Pope Francis

text: At the first consistory of his papacy, held on 22 February 2014, Francis created 19 new cardinals. At the time of their elevation to that rank, 16 of these new cardinals were under eighty years of age and thus eligible to vote in a papal conclave. The new appointees included prelates from South America, Africa, and Asia, including appointees in some of the world's poorest countries, such as Chibly Langlois from Haiti and Philippe Nakellentuba Ouedraogo from Burkina Faso. The consistory was a rare occasion in which Francis and his predecessor, Benedict XVI, appeared together in public.


title: Pope Francis

text: Benedict XVI also attended the second consistory on 14 February 2015, at which Francis elevated 20 new cardinals, with 15 under the age of eighty and five over the age of eighty. The pope continued his practice of appointing cardinals from the peripheries, such as Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar and Soane Patita Paini Mafi of Tonga.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis presided over the third consistory of his papacy on 19 November 2016, elevating 17 new cardinals. Of that total number at the time of their elevation, 13 were under the age of eighty and four were over the age of eighty. Francis continued his previous practice of elevating cardinals from the peripheries with an emphasis again on Asia and Africa, such as Patrick D'Rozario from Bangladesh and Dieudonné Nzapalainga from the Central African Republic, while also naming the first three American cardinals of his papacy and only one Curial appointment.


title: Pope Francis

text: The pope presided over a fourth consistory for the elevation of five new cardinals on the afternoon of 28 June 2017. Each of the five were under the age of eighty, and were thus eligible to vote in a papal conclave. This consistory was noteworthy for the fact that, with the pope continuing the trend of elevating cardinals from a diverse range of areas, no cardinals elevated are of the Roman Curia, and one was a mere auxiliary bishop.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis presided over his fifth consistory for the elevation of 14 new cardinals on 28 June 2018. The first eleven were under the age of eighty, and therefore, were eligible to vote in a future papal conclave while the last three were over the age of eighty, and thus, ineligible to vote in a papal conclave. The pope continued the practice of naming the Vicar of Rome and a curial prefect as cardinals, while naming his substitute for the Secretariat of State in anticipation of his transferral to a curial department. The pope also continued his practice of bestowing the red hat on those from peripheries such as Madagascar, Pakistan, and Iraq, and like in 2016, created a priest as a cardinal. The consistory was also noteworthy for the fact that Francis named the papal almoner Konrad Krajewski as a cardinal, marking the consistory the first occasion where the almoner was made a cardinal. Francis himself later said that he wanted the office of almoner to receive the red hat going forward as it was an important arm of the Vatican.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 1 September 2019, following his weekly Sunday Angelus address, Francis unexpectedly announced the appointment of 13 new cardinals. Of these, 10 appointees were under the age of 80 and would therefore become cardinal electors, besides three over 80. The new cardinals were formally installed at the consistory celebrated on 5 October 2019. Most of the new cardinals come from the peripheries of the church and developing countries. Two new appointees were from Muslim majority countries (Morocco and Indonesia), while two others were known for their work on refugee and migration issues. This action took the number of cardinal electors appointed by Francis to the College of Cardinals to about 70 out of nearly 130.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis created thirteen new cardinals on 28 November 2020; nine appointees were under the age of 80, therefore, could vote in a future papal conclave. The pope also nominated four cardinals over the age of 80. Most of these new appointees continued the trend that Francis adhered to, appointing the first cardinals to represent Brunei and Rwanda. Francis also nominated the first African American cardinal (Gregory), while naming the first Conventual Franciscan (Gambetti) in almost 160 years, and the first from Siena (Lojudice) since 1801. Three of his appointees were only priests upon their nomination, therefore, two (Gambetti and Feroci) received their episcopal consecration, while one (Cantalamessa) was granted a papal dispensation from it.


title: Pope Francis

text: With his April 2015 papal bull of indiction, "Misericordiae Vultus" (Latin: "The Face of Mercy"), Francis inaugurated a Special Jubilee Year of Mercy, to run from 8 December 2015, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the last Sunday before Advent and the Solemnity of the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe on 20 November 2016.


title: Pope Francis

text: The Holy Doors of the major basilicas of Rome (including the Great Door of St. Peter's) were opened, and special "Doors of Mercy" were opened at cathedrals and other major churches around the world, where the faithful can earn indulgences by fulfilling the usual conditions of prayer for the pope's intentions, confession, and detachment from sin, and communion. During Lent of that year, special 24-hour penance services will be celebrated, and during the year, special qualified and experienced priests called "Missionaries of Mercy" will be available in every diocese to forgive even severe, special-case sins normally reserved to the Holy See's Apostolic Penitentiary.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis established the World Day of the Poor in his Apostolic Letter, "Misericordia et Misera", issued on 20 November 2016 to celebrate the end of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.


title: Pope Francis

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Francis canceled his regular general audiences at St. Peter's Square to prevent crowds from gathering and spreading the virus, which seriously affected Italy. He encouraged priests to visit patients and health workers; urged the faithful not to forget the poor during the time of crisis; offered prayers for people with the virus in China; and invoked the Blessed Virgin Mary under her title Salus Populi Romani, as the Diocese of Rome observed a period of prayer and fasting in recognition of the victims. The pontiff reacted with displeasure on 13 March 2020, at the news that the Vicar General had closed all churches in the Diocese of Rome. Despite Italy being under a quarantine lockdown, Francis pleaded "not to leave the ... people alone" and worked to partially reverse the closures.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 20 March 2020, Francis asked the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) to create a Vatican COVID-19 Commission to express the church's concern for the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and propose responses to the potential socio-economic challenges deriving from it.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 27 March, Francis gave an extraordinary benediction "Urbi et Orbi". In his homily on calming the storm in the Gospel of Mark, Francis described the setting: "Dense darkness has thickened on our squares, streets and cities; it looks over our lives filling everything with a deafening silence and a desolate void that paralyzes everything in its passage: you can feel it in the air, you can feel it in your gestures. ...In the face of suffering, where the true development of our peoples is measured, we discover and experience the priestly prayer of Jesus: 'may all be one'."


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis maintains getting COVID vaccination is a moral obligation. Francis stated that people had a responsibility to look after themselves, "and this translates into respect for the health of those around us. Health care is a moral obligation", he stated.


title: Pope Francis

text: In response to the economic harm created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Francis stated that now is the time to consider implementing a universal basic wage.


title: Pope Francis

text: Following the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Francis visited the Russian embassy in Rome in what was described as an "unprecedented move." Francis called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stating his "sorrow" as the Vatican worked to find "room for negotiation." As the invasion began, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk cancelled a trip to visit Francis in Florence. On 25 February, the day after the invasion began, Francis would assure Shevchuk via a phone call that "he would do everything he can to help end the Ukraine conflict." During the 27 February Angelus address, Francis called for peace, saying, "Silence the weapons!" Francis also sent two high-ranking cardinals with aid to Ukraine at the beginning of March. These special envoys were the papal almsgiver, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, and Cardinal Michael Czerny, who is head of the papal office that deals with migration, charity, justice and peace. This mission, which involved several trips, was considered a highly unusual move of Vatican diplomacy. Pope Francis consecrated both Russia and Ukraine on 25 March 2022 (see consecration of Russia).


title: Pope Francis

text: In mid-May 2022, Francis described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented[.]” Francis explained that this observation did not mean he was "pro-Putin": "“It would be simplistic and wrong to say such a thing. I am simply against reducing complexity to the distinction between good guys and bad guys, without reasoning about roots and interests, which are very complex.”


title: Pope Francis

text: On 24 August 2022, Pope Francis described the killing of Darya Dugina as a case of innocents paying for the Russo-Ukrainian War. On the same day, the Ukraine's envoy to the Holy See protested against such a description of the killing, saying that Dugina was "one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism" and therefore not an innocent victim.


title: Pope Francis

text: In September 2022, Francis pointed out that Ukraine has a lawful right to defend itself, and that dialogue with the aggressor is necessary even when it stinks and later said that Ukrainians were noble people who were victims of savageness, monstrosities and torture.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 2 October 2022, Francis directly addressed Putin and Zelenskyy, making an impassioned appeal to Putin to halt the "spiral of violence and death", saying that a nuclear escalation would bring "uncontrollable global consequences". Addressing Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, Pope Francis asked him to be open about "serious peace proposals" at the same time that Francis recognized that Ukraine had suffered an "aggression" and that he "pained about the suffering of the Ukrainian people".


title: Pope Francis

text: In November 2022, Francis granted an interview to Christian magazine "America". During the interview, Francis stated that generally, the Chechens and Buryats minorities were "perhaps the cruellest of Russia [but] not of Russian tradition". These remarks were strongly condemned by Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who expressed that the comments were "no longer Russophobia, [they] are a perversion on a level I can’t even name". Others remarked that his statement was "racist".


title: Pope Francis

text: On 11 January 2021, Francis allowed bishops to institute women to the ministries of acolyte and lector. While these instituted ministries were previously reserved to men, Catholic women already carry out these duties without institution in most of the world. Francis wrote that these ministries are fundamentally distinct from those reserved to ordained clergy.


title: Pope Francis

text: In February 2021, Francis announced back-to-back appointments of women to take positions that were only held by men in the past. He appointed France's member of the Xaviere Missionary Sisters, Nathalie Becquart as the first co-undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops. Besides, an Italian magistrate, Catia Summaria also became the first woman Promoter of Justice in the Vatican's Court of Appeals.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis was mandated by electing cardinals to sort out Vatican finances following scandals during the papacies of Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II. He stated he is determined to end corruption in the Catholic Church but is not very optimistic due to it being a human problem dating back centuries.


title: Pope Francis

text: On 24 July 2022, Francis began an apostolic journey to Canada, expressing his sorrow, indignation, and shame over the church's abuse of Canadian indigenous children in residential schools. He apologized for the church's role in "projects of cultural destruction" and forced assimilation which culminated in the abusive system of residential schools. Francis promised a serious investigation into the history of abuse.


title: Pope Francis

text: In "Evangelii gaudium" Francis revealed what would be the emphases of his pontificate: a missionary impulse among all Catholics, sharing the faith more actively, avoiding worldliness and more visibly living the gospel of God's mercy, and helping the poor and working for social justice.


title: Pope Francis

text: From his first major letter "Evangelii gaudium" ("Joy to the World"), Francis called for "a missionary and pastoral conversion" whereby the laity would fully share in the missionary task of the church. Then in his letter on the call of all to the same holiness, "Gaudete et exsultate", Francis describes holiness as "an impulse to evangelize and to leave a mark in this world".


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis called for decentralization of governance away from Rome, and for a synodal manner of decision making in dialogue with the people. He strongly opposed clericalism and made women full members of the church's dicasteries in Rome.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis's naming of himself after Francis of Assisi was an early indication of how he shared Francis's care for all of creation. This was followed in May 2015 with his major encyclical on the environment, "Laudato si'" ("Praise be to you").


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis has highly extolled "popular movements", which demonstrate the "strength of us", serve as a remedy to the "culture of the self", and are based on solidarity with the poor and the common good.


title: Pope Francis

text: Cardinal Walter Kasper has called mercy "the key word of his pontificate." His papal motto "Miserando atque eligendo" ("by having mercy and by choosing") contains a central theme of his papacy, God's mercy, While maintaining the Catholic Church's traditional teaching against abortion, Francis, has referred to the "obsession" of some Catholics with a few issues like "abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods" which "do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ."


title: Pope Francis

text: In June 2013, Francis suggested that "if a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" Later, in 2015, he declared that "the family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage." He has also suggested that same-sex marriage "disfigures God's plan for creation."


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis endorsed the 2015 Slovak same-sex marriage referendum which would have banned same-sex marriage and same-sex adoptions in the country.


title: Pope Francis

text: He stated that he supports legally recognising same-sex civil unions in a statement from an interview published in October 2020; this passage was from an interview from 2019, but this passage had been cut from public releases at the time. The statement was also interpreted as supportive of LGBT adoption.


title: Pope Francis

text: However, Vatican later clarified that his comments were taken out of context with two comments to two different questions at different times spliced together in a very misleading way. Francis has never officially pronounced support for gay civil unions.


title: Pope Francis

text: In January 2022, Francis said during a weekly audience that parents of gay children should offer support to their children instead of condemning them.


title: Pope Francis

text: Francis supported the use of force to stop Islamic militants from attacking religious minorities in Iraq. In January 2018, Francis met with a group of Yazidi refugees in Europe and expressed his support for their right to freely profess their own faith without limitations. In the meeting, he also urged the international community "not to remain a silent and unresponsive spectator in the face of [your] tragedy."


title: Pope Francis

text: Since 2016, criticism against Francis by theological conservatives has intensified. One commentator has described the conservative resistance against Francis as "unique in its visibility" in recent church history. Some have explained the level of disagreement as due to his going beyond theoretical principles to pastoral discernment.


title: Pope Francis

text: As cardinal, in 2010 Bergoglio commissioned a study which concluded that Father Julio César Grassi, a priest convicted of child sexual abuse, was innocent, that his victims were lying, and that the case against him never should have gone to trial. Despite the study, the Supreme Court of Argentina upheld the conviction and 15-year prison sentence against Grassi in March 2017. Francis has admitted that the church "arrived late" in dealing with sexual abuse cases. During his papacy, a number of abuse survivors have expressed disappointment in Francis's response to sex abuse in the church while others have praised him for his actions.