Pope Francis: His Life and Thought by Mario I. Aguilar (review)

The author poses clearly the meaning and goals of his book since its first page: to know and understand Pope Francis beyond his own myth. Aguilar shows us not an extraordinary and audacious pope, but a singular priest who encountered many obstacles in his long career until he achieved the rank of cardinal during the last years of John Paul II’s pontificate. Aguilar knows that the most original aspect of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s life is the long road he must have traveled to the papacy. His election in a conclave as pontiff had never been in his plans. Nevertheless, when the opportunity arrived, he showed himself fully prepared. Thus, Aguilar does not focus on Francis’s pontificate; rather, he has chosen to tell us the complete story of Bergoglio’s life before his elevation.

Each chapter focuses on different stages of his ecclesiastical career (from Jesuit to Provincial of the Society of Jesus during Argentina’s “dirty war,” then bishop, archbishop of Buenos Aires, and cardinal), accompanied by an appropriate contextualization of the Argentine Church, society, and politics. Aguilar also takes into account Bergoglio’s intervention at the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (CELAM) Conference of Aparecida in 2007 and his performance as a cardinal close to the Holy See.

Bergoglio showed himself to be a multifaceted bishop in Argentina. He preached humility and austerity and continued to take public buses and subway trains, but he remained at the core of political power during his time as archbishop of Buenos Aires. He walked every street of the Bajo Flores slums, but he returned to Plaza de Mayo to sleep at night, just a few meters away from the government palace. Aguilar pictures perfectly those kinds of ambiguities. Bergoglio faced up to severe political crises in Argentina’s recent history, and he never dodged uncomfortable situations. Thus, he testified in court in cases where human rights were involved, and he made an effort to intercede when Argentina sank into a political and economic abyss in 2001. As a priest, he never stayed preaching inside the cloisters. On the contrary, he always had a powerful political instinct that made him audacious in many aspects, even when he remained frankly conservative in the doctrinal realm. Aguilar accurately details this ambiguous picture.

Nevertheless, it may not be worthless to ask if we can really understand Pope Francis through his past. Is there a manifest continuity between Bergoglio and Francis? Is our knowledge of Bergoglio’s skills in dealing with society and politics in Argentina really enough to elucidate how he confronts the global scene and politics? Unfortunately, it is too soon to answer these questions and to measure the depth and the true significance of the changes that Francis has introduced into the Catholic Church.