Pope Francis

(dramatic music) Narrator: He was the inconspicuous cleric.
Austen Ivereigh: He’s a curious figure because Bergolio could walk down the street and not be recognized.
Narrator: Poised to carry out his life of service with quiet resolve.
Anne Thompson: He became known as the Bishop of the slums.
Narrator: Until an unexpected announcement… Reporter: Pope Benedict The 16th, visibly tired of the demands of the job, bowed out.
Narrator: Would change the trajectory of a man, his mission and the masses.
Cardinal Tuaran: We have a Pope.
(crowd cheering) Francis!
(crowd cheering) (dramatic music) Juan Carlos Cruz: Francis!
This is a stunner!
(laughter) This is a stunner!
Pope Francis: I’m convinced that we can make a difference Narrator: He’s become an advocate of the impoverished… Anne Thompson: He established his outreach to the poor.
He changed lives in a way no one could imagine.
Narrator: A champion of the ignored… Mary McHale: He’s at least acknowledged sexual abuse victims, which is more than I can say for some in the past.
Narrator: An Apostle of the environment… Pope Francis: Now is the time for protecting nature!
(cracking) (splashing) Narrator: Almost immediately, the new pope would challenge centuries-old traditions.
Pope Francis: If a person is gay who am I to judge him?
Anne Thompson: He makes five percent of the senior leadership at the Vatican, women.
Narrator: But with change would come challenge… Austen Ivereigh: You had right-wing Catholics saying, why doesn’t he stick to religion?
Mario J. Paredes: They are convinced that he has a hidden agenda.
Thompson: Many told Francis to stay in his lane.
Narrator: Francis however, remains undaunted, and intent on making God accessible to all.
Pope Francis: It is my duty to build bridges and to help poor men and women to do the same.
– Many say that what Pope Francis is doing is politics.
No, it is the Gospel.
Thompson: He has brought the Catholic Church to the basic message of Jesus.
Austen Ivereigh: By focusing so relentlessly on love and mercy, he’s unquestionably the game changer.
(dramatic music) (church bells sounding) (crowd chatter) (church bells sounding) (crowd cheering) Priest: The windows are opening, let’s take a listen to the name of the next Pope.
Cardinal Tuaran: I announce to you with extreme happiness, we have a Pope.
(crowd cheering) Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Priest: Cardinal Bergoglio!
Cardinal Tuaran: He took the name of Francis.
Priest: Francis!
It’s the first Francis in the history of the Catholic Church!
– It is fair to say by the reaction in the Square of St. Peter’s they are stunned.
– This is a stunner!
(laughter) This is a stunner.
(choir music) Thompson: I was standing in St. Peter’s Square.
And there was like this collective, ‘Huh?’
Like, ‘Who is he?’
We had, truly, papal flashcards that NBC News had prepared, with a dozen different candidates, and luckily Bergoglio was one of them.
Man: (speaking foreign language) No, I don’t know him, but I am happy because we have a Pope.
Priest: It’s Cardinal Bergoglio, from Buenos Aires.
Crowd: Ooooh!
Aaah!
(crowd cheering) Father Zampini-Davies: He’s a fan of San Lorenzo, which is a football team.
If you are a fan of San Lorenzo, you cannot be from any other place than central Buenos Aires.
Austen Ivereigh: Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936, and it was seven years before that, that his father had immigrated to Argentina from the North of Italy, with his parents.
His mother was also an Italian emigre.
Father Morello: There was a big influx of Italian immigrants in those years, beginning of the 20th century into Argentina.
Ivereigh: The young Jorge was the eldest of five children, and he grew up in Buenos Aires as part of this very Italian family.
Ivereigh: Jorge Mario was a pretty typical kid, he hung around the neighborhood, the barrio, with the guys, you know, he liked to kick around the football.
His school friends remember him as always being outstanding in all the subjects and always being concerned for others.
Father Morello: Where does this need come from to help other people?
In the summer of his eighth grade, his father found him a job cleaning in a factory not because they needed money in the family, but he wanted him to have a real life experience.
Woman: He was very humble, he was very loving.
Paredes: I believe that the formation of his character has to do a lot with his grandmother.
She was a very devout, Catholic woman, who kept a very close relationship with him.
Thompson: His faith, he says, was handed down by his grandmother.
It’s not an intellectual faith.
It’s more from the gut.
It’s who you are.
It’s what defines your family.
Paredes: Principles of social justice, nourished by his grandmother, meant he was always attracted to service.
He really wanted to do good.
Rosario Carello: The calling of Pope Francis was truly, a wonderful story.
Ivereigh: Jorge was a teenager at the time and he was on his way to meet his girlfriend.
Woman: He had a crush on a girl from the Catholic Action group, and she also had a crush on him.
It seemed they were about to start a relationship.
On the 21st of September, the group was going to picnic.
Ivereigh: He passed by the Basilica in Flores, which is where the family went.
Rosario Carello: He stops, because he wanted to confess.
(angelic choir music) Ivereigh: Whatever the reason, he felt in need of help, he felt anguished or conflicted and he just found himself drawn to the Church.
And had an experience in the confessional which would change his life.
Rosario Carello: And it is during this confession that he received the light, something inside, which words cannot explain.
Paredes: He felt the call that he wanted to be a priest.
Carello: His beloved mother, Regina faced with the fact that her son could become a priest, says: “No”.
Thompson: He was going to study medicine or science, and he fell in love with God.
He felt a connection.
And so instead, he became a Jesuit.
Against his mother’s wishes.
Paredes: His mother, she would never go visit him at the seminary, never.
Emma Graham: The Jesuits are committed to a militant pursuit of spreading the gospel in a really beautiful way that goes out to the world, and isn’t afraid of wearing their heart on their sleeve.
Randy Boyagoda: They’re almost kind of God’s soldiers.
Father Zampini-Davies: They have education networks, they have social justice networks, and those networks have been very helpful in promoting caring for the earth, and for the poor.
Father Morello: It was an order that was founded with the idea of working in the cities.
Priests engage with the city, engage with the culture, working with the poor, social works, migrants, abused women, in jails, in prisons.
So in different places… where there is some need to preach the gospel.
Thompson: He studied for nine years to become a priest.
The Jesuits have a long path.
Carello: On the day of his priestly ordination; Jorge Bergoglio would spot his mother in the front row, at that point, she would kiss his consecrated hands and they would reconcile.
(soft music) Paredes: I met father Jorge Maria Bergoglio at the Jesuit University of Argentina.
He was a very serious young teacher, but his lessons were truly remarkable.
He will combine literature with his knowledge for classical music like operas, (opera singer performing) as well as popular music, like tango.
(tango music) And he will constantly make reference to great artists and paintings from all over the world.
So that really, to me was very revealing as someone who is very special.
Randy Boyagoda: Bergoglio clearly has gifts, gifts for leadership and a certain charisma.
And that led to his becoming at a very young age, the local Superior, basically in charge of the Jesuits in Argentina during a very difficult time in that country’s history.
Ivereigh: Argentina at the time, in the 1970s, was a profoundly divided society, between left and right.
There was a lot of political violence.
The military was in and out of power, and the country really was in chaos.
Morello: The legitimacy of the government was evaporating.
Political parties could not agree.
And the military took power in March, 1976.
Ivereigh: The army came in with a plan to stay in power and to rid Argentina of the threat of leftist guerrillas.
Boyagoda: In what is now known as ‘The Dirty War,’ a period of intense conflict and authoritarian rule.
Ivereigh: It was one of the most brutal military repressions in contemporary Western history.
Paredes: Families lost their children, because they were abducted by the military, because the fear is that those youngsters were troublemakers and Communists.
Morello: The government will take someone from their homes and they wouldn’t know where they went.
Ivereigh: From 1976, all the way through to the early 80’s, 30,000 people lost their lives or were exiled or disappeared as a result of this purge.
(church bell sounding) Boyagoda: The Dirty Wars created strong tensions internal to the Church, between the Church’s longstanding commitment to serving the poor, and its longstanding relationship with government.
That was the situation that Bergoglio and other Jesuits faced in Argentina, during their dirty wars, and it was during this period that two of the young priests under Bergolio’s supervision were arrested.
(dramatic music) (suspenseful music) Ivereigh: Father Jorge Mario Bergolgio, at a very young age, at the age of 36, was appointed provincial, that’s to say ‘head,’ of the local Jesuit chapter in Argentina, and of course had to deal immediately with this political polarization and violence.
(sound of gunfire) Morello: Father Jalics and Father Yorio were two priests who were working in slums in the city of Buenos Aires.
They working with the people, supporting human rights, and critical of the government.
Boyagoda: It could be very dangerous to dissent from the state.
Bergoglio was aware of the possible consequences of their falling afoul of the regime.
Ivereigh: To protect them, these two Jesuits were basically given the choice, by Bergoglio, “either you’re a Jesuit and you obey the Provincial, or you leave.”
And they just simply ignored Bergoglio.
They decided to stay in the shanty town and the army swept in, just as Bergoglio had warned them would happen.
And the two Jesuits were arrested, and over a period of months, brutally tortured.
Bergoglio did everything he could to get them out, he said, you know, “I need these two Jesuits returned, they are not guilty, they are not involved in terrorism.”
And I think it’s because of his interventions, that they were saved.
(dramatic music) They both resented, what they saw as their Provincial having abandoned them.
Boyagoda: This became a major issue later in Bergolio’s more prominent life, because it was perceived that he didn’t do enough to defend his priests against the regime.
(marching footsteps) Ivereigh: All serious research shows that Bergoglio saved dozens of people from the military, often at enormous risk to himself.
He drove people with just a blanket over their heads in the backseat, in order to get them to safety.
You know, had he been pulled over by the military, it would have been curtains for him.
(soft angelic choir) (church bells sounding) Ivereigh: In 1979, Bergoglio becomes a rector of the Collegial Maximo, which was the big Jesuit school of studies in the town of San Miguel.
And what made his regime so unique was how committed it was to help the poor.
Training projects, job skills and popular kitchens, a whole kind of mobilization of the community, which the Jesuits who trained with him, remember to this day as being exceptional, there was nothing like it with the Jesuits anywhere else in the world.
Bergoglio was a compelling, fascinating, very exciting rector, but on his own admission, he could be quite authoritarian, and his personal charisma was perhaps too great.
He had too big a hold on these young men.
Thompson: He clearly was gifted, because he rose very quickly within the Jesuits.
But from what I understand, his leadership style divided the order.
Ivereigh: So what happened between 1986 and 1992, there was resentment, and jealousy and suspicion that he was creating a personal cult, that he was trying to divide the Jesuits, all the usual suspicions that happen when people are successful, I suppose.
And the new leadership has had enough.
So they banish him to Cordoba, a mountain city in the central west of Argentina where he had no role.
This was unusual, to go from being a Provincial, suddenly to being nothing.
So he would spend the next 18 months, in a spiritual desolation, certainly psychological depression.
He would take care of the old people, in the house.
He would hear people’s confessions.
He wrote a lot, he read a lot.
And I guess like all such experiences of purgation, it changed him.
It left him much more humble, much more trusting in God.
I think the Cordoba experience would ultimatly make him a much more patient and gentle leader.
In 1992, he ends his Cordoba exile, essentially by leaving the Jesuits.
The Archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time, knew Bergoglio as a man of enormous potential, great leadership qualities.
Thompson: So he was brought back as an auxiliary Bishop to Buenos Aires.
Paredes: Couple of years later, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was named Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Zampini-Davies: When I was in my first parish it was a rural area in the Delta of Buenos Aires, so I was always on a boat.
One day, the engine of the boat broke down.
We didn’t have money to buy a new boat, and that means that we couldn’t visit all the people in the islands.
Suddenly, a new engine came.
And who, who paid for it?
Archbishop Bergoglio!
He knows all the work that we are doing with the Islanders.
So he paid for the boat from his own pocket money.
So I knew he was going to put a lot of emphasis on the Church that reaches out.
Carello: He decides to visit and work in those slums, la Villas miserias, and the priests from his diocese start to follow him.
Thompson: He became known as the ‘Bishop of the slums.’
And he would ride the subway into the slums, and he would go and minister to people, that the Church and society had forgotten about.
Emma Graham: He is elevating them into places, that are traditionally seen as exclusive, such as having your feet washed by him.
Vincenzo Paglia: He is putting the poor at the center of his preaching, of his ministry, and also of his political and economic choices.
He didn’t care for useless frills.
He lived alone, he cooked for himself.
He went by bus alone.
It was inconceivable for the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Thompson: Because of his humility, he was eventually made Cardinal of Buenos Aires.
Carello: He was a Cardinal and he went in those slums dressed as a priest – and even then, people said that he was the most photographed man, his picture was already on the walls of these very poor houses.
Paredes: During that time, we begin to see that there are problems inside the Vatican.
The pontificate of Benedict 16, one of the greatest intellectuals of the Catholic Church.
He was a man of the library.
He loved to study.
He loved to write.
But, he was not an administrator.
Journalist: On a bright morning in St. Peter’s Square, the 85 year-old, Pope Benedict the 16th, visibly tired of the demands of the job, bowed out after almost 8 years as leader of the Catholic Church.
He’s the first Pope to retire in 600 years.
Boyagoda: This was a stunning turn of events, that created a kind of unexpected and fresh context for the election of a new Pope.
Thompson: It is one of the magnificent rituals of the Catholic Church, the conclave that elects the next Pope.
The Cardinals, all in their red regalia, are locked into the Sistine Chapel, where they vote on candidates.
Ivereigh: Bergoglio was on nobody’s list, because he was considered to be too old, and he flew below the radar.
Paredes: Bergoglio delivered an impassionate speech, saying, let us restore the Church, let us go back to the essentials of the Faith.
Thompson: At that time, the Cardinals were looking for a leader that would respond to the global Church.
They wanted a Church that was less focused on Rome and more focused on the rest of the world.
Paredes: They began to see, yes, this man is speaking to the issues of the Church of today.
And he has the passion to address them, and he was elected the second day of the conclave, rather quickly.
Thompson: Standing outside in St. Peter’s Square, we were watching the smoke and if it’s gray, that’s no Pope.
If it’s white, that’s a Pope.
And when Cardinal Tauran came out and announced his name was Francis… Cardinal Tauran: He took the name of Francis.
Thompson: Before he had even spoken a word, he had won the hearts of the Romans, who had gathered there by the name he chose, because they adore Saint Francis of Assisi.
Paglia: Francis of Assisi is the best-known Saint in the world.
Pope Francis takes it as his new name to highlight the beginning of a new story.
The story of a Pope who would have put poverty, environment and peace at the heart of his ministry.
Zampini-Davies: He came out dressed very, very simply.
Pope Francis: Brothers and sisters, good evening!.
(crowd cheering) Zampini-Davies: And the first words he said was, “buona sera” – good evening.
And everybody was in shock, the Pope doesn’t say bueno sera!
Rosario Carello: That “good evening” was like a sudden spark.
He was welcomed as if he were a rockstar.
Pope Francis: You know that the work of the conclave is to give a Bishop to Rome.
It seems as if my brother Cardinals went to find him almost from the end of the earth, but we are here” Thompson: People laughed.
I mean, he kind of told a joke, when does a Pope tell a joke?
Zampini-Davies: Imagine, this is the first Pope coming from Latin America.
We never thought that an Argentinian could be a Pope.
A Pope that is not European, a Pope with a different experience.
This is a breath of fresh air.
Cruz: I was like, unbelievable… from Argentina!
I mean, this is our salvation.
Pope Francis: “First I want to ask you a favor.
Before the Bishop blesses the people…” Thompson: And then he said, before I bless you I ask you to pray for me.
Pope Francis: Let us say this prayer, your prayer for me, in silence.”
Thompson: And he bowed to the people.
(camera shutters clicking) All I could hear were the clicks of the professional cameras.
Rome is one of the noisiest places in the world, but at that moment in St Peter’s Square, it is the silence that astounds you.
And that was the first indication that this was going to be a different kind of papacy.
(crowd cheering) (dramatic music) (suspenseful music) Boyagoda: Following his election as Pope, Francis made a point of paying his own hotel bill.
He didn’t want to ride in the Mercedes, and instead decided to ride around in a Ford Focus.
Austen Ivereigh: He was the outsider who was elected precisely he was an outsider, because he was austere, because he was known as a reformer.
Boyagoda: Perhaps most dramatically, he decided not to live in the Papal apartments and instead lives in the Santa Marta guesthouse, which by comparison feels like a modern hotel.
And for someone like Pope Francis, he’s not going there because he wants air conditioning, he’s going there because there are other people there.
There’s an opportunity for communal living, which is consistent with his life as a Jesuit.
He made the decision early on, perhaps to take a more common touch with the faithful.
Paglia: His first official visit was at Lampedusa in Italy.
Boyagoda: Lampedusa is one of the places, where migrants from Africa who were seeking asylum in Europe were being received.
Man: Don’t jump!
Don’t jump!
Pope Francis: We are a society that has forgotten the experience of shedding tears that leads to the globalization of indifference.
(dramatic music) Ivereigh: Francis has put migration right at the center of the Catholic Church’s concerns.
It’s a matter obviously dear to his heart from his own family background.
Carello: Being the grandson of immigrants in Argentina who, if they had taken the previous ship, as was first planned they would have shipwrecked on the journey from Italy to Argentina, how could he not feel, in his own flesh, the pain of those who are shipwrecked in the sea?
Many say that what Pope Francis is doing is politics.
No, it is the Gospel.
Ivereigh: He went to a camp where people are literally caged in shocking, shocking conditions.
(slow dramatic music) We are talking here about human beings, and Francis believes that if western Christian values mean anything, it is that we are always willing to embrace the stranger in need.
Pope Francis: I decided to show here this lifejacket crucified on this cross to remind us that we must keep our eyes open keep our heart open, to remind everybody the mandatory effort to save each human life.
Boyagoda: Francis and the Church made significant commitments to the aiding of migrants; to protect them, to shield them, to receive them, when the state won’t.
Anne Thompson: When he went to Lesbos, Greece, he took three families from Syria, twelve people, all Muslim, brought them to Italy on the Papal plane.
At that time, he had asked every parish in Europe to adopt a migrant family, to help them find a new life.
And he was showing you how it could be done.
He changed those 12 lives, in a way no one could imagine.
Paglia: In such a conflictual world, it allows him to change the course of history.
It recalls the martyrs’ experiences.
Pope Francis is giving his life for the whole planet.
Boyagoda: I would say that 2015 is a year where you have a confluence of major events and responses from Francis.
And that had to do with Francis’ decision to address human sexuality, to address the question of the role of women in the Church, to address the situation of climate change.
(slow music) (dramatic violin music) British reporter: You can’t rebuild the rainforest, what has been lost here is the biodiversity that lived within it.
Greta Thunberg: We are right now about eleven years away from that climate breakdown will become irreversible.
Boyagoda: Popes issue teaching documents, encyclicals, throughout their papacies.
About an issue of pressing significance.
In Francis’s case, I’d say the most important encyclical that he released, is called Laudato Si.
Pope Francis: This is then an appeal on my side towards responsibility, according to the duty God gave the human being during creation: cultivate and look after the garden in which He placed Him” Thompson: Laudato Si brought the moral authority of the Papacy to the issue of climate change.
(slow dramatic music) Emma Graham: St. Francis of Assisi was a patron Saint of animals and ecology and so in choosing this as his name, Pope Francis identifies that care for the environment and creation is central to his Papal mission.
Zampini-Davies: What Pope Francis is talking about is the life of the planet.
And we are part of it – human beings.
We are entrusted this by God, to work with it, and to take care for it, to till and to keep, that is the mandate of the Bible.
(dramatic music) Morello: It’s a gamechanger, not only because of the topic that changed the social doctrine of the Church, but he wrote the document in consultation with scientists, so it’s a Church document with a scientific background.
Thompson: It didn’t come out of thin air.
There was real knowledge and research behind Laudato Si gleaned from the scientific community.
Pope Francis: This home of ours is being ruined and that damages everyone, especially the poor.”
Thompson: What Pope Francis said is, we have a moral imperative to address this issue, because it’s impacting those who are least able to do something about it.
It’s impacting the poorest of the world.
Boyagoda: We cannot get right with the earth, if we don’t get right with each other.
And to get right with each other means recognition of economic injustice.
(dramatic music) Ivereigh: It is particularly the responsibility of the parts of the world, which consumes most, generates therefore most of the damage.
He has this global perspective that says, the rich countries are in debt to the poor countries, because actually where the oceans are rising, where the land is drying up, where lives are becoming unsustainable, is not in the United States and Europe.
It is in parts of Africa and South Asia and Latin America.
(dramatic music) The American right wing was extremely worried and disturbed by the prospect of the Pope getting behind the whole ecological question.
Paredes: Here in United States, some Conservatives are convinced that he has a hidden agenda, that he wants to transform the Church into a liberal camp.
Thompson: Many right wing Republican politicians basically told Francis to stay in his lane, that he’s not a scientist.
Ivereigh: Why doesn’t he stick to religion, what does the Pope know about the science of climate change?
(crowd cheering) But when the encyclical came out, it was so complete, so comprehensive, and so reliant on the best of the science, that it was actually extremely hard to question in terms of its authority.
Announcer: Mr. Speaker, the Pope of the Holy See.
(cheering/applause) Thompson: He appealed to the ‘better angels’ of the United States.
(loud applause) Pope Francis: Now is the time for courageous action and strategies, aimed at implementing a culture of care to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.
(subdued applause) Thompson: He was saying to America: be your best self, because this is what the world needs.
(applause) Greta Thunberg: Thank you for, for standing up for the climate and speaking the truth.
It really… it means a lot.
Pope Francis: God Bless you.
Continue to work, okay?
Continue.
Okay?
Go on.
Go ahead!
Paglia: We are facing a change of times which also requires the Church to start a deep, renewed reflection.
Carello: One day he said, “What would a world without women be like?”
And he says, “It would be a very harsh, austere world, without any sign of the Sacred.”
Falasca: Women have never participated in the decision-making roles of the Church.
It is not Christian.
Thompson: Church doctrine says, that women can’t be priests.
The problem is half of the congregation is women.
So what does Francis do?
He makes 5% of the senior leadership at the Vatican, women.
Doesn’t sound like a lot, but the Vatican is the ultimate all-male club and to make any kind of inroads in that organization is very, very difficult.
Graham: Pope Francis changed Canon law to allow for women to serve as lectors and acolytes.
Thompson: What he’s trying to show is you don’t have to wear a Roman collar to be a leader in the Church.
That’s a really tough thing to do, because you’re bucking centuries of tradition.
But he is trying to do something.
Is it enough?
I don’t think so.
Cruz: There’s miles of things still to do.
And I think the Church should be a place where everybody feels welcome.
Pope Francis: If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him?
Paglia: That extraordinary sentence of Pope Francis, “Who am I to judge homosexuals?”
In my opinion, it is worth more than one entire volume of sexual moral theology.
Ivereigh: He’s the first Pope ever to use the word gay and that’s important because of the divide between the Church and the gay community.
Tatchell: Many people like myself are highly skeptical of the Pope’s statement.
We’re concerned that it’s just PR and spin with no real substance.
That the Pope is merely trying to repair the damage caused by the Vatican’s hardline stance against women and gay people, that it is trying to head off the mass defection of liberal Catholics from the Church.
McHale: I left the Catholic Church because my senior year in high school, I was struggling with my sexuality, you know, it wasn’t cool to be gay, especially in the Catholic Church, it wasn’t accepted.
And now I go to a church where all people are accepted and loved for who they are.
But now, Pope Francis has at least acknowledged it, which is more than I can say for some in the past.
Thompson: What you’re seeing is a more compassionate tone towards homosexuals from Pope Francis.
But the big issue is, should they be granted The Sacrament of Marriage in the Catholic Church?
Paglia: There’s no doubt marriage and family concern man and woman; it’s a question of producing the next generation.
Thompson: But Francis endorses civil unions for same-sex marriages.
He says, homosexuals shouldn’t be thrown out of their families.
They should have legal protections.
Paredes: When he made those pronouncements, some factions of the Church got very nervous.
Thompson: Traditional Catholics, Catholics who have been true to the Doctrine, they’re kind of like, ‘Why are you welcoming these people, who’ve ignored the rules and the Word of God, and we followed it all, we’ve done it right.’
Ivereigh: There’s no question that under Francis, there’s been a whole new language about, and directed to, gay people.
One of welcome, of embrace and love, of unconditional acceptance.
But the Church wrestles with this.
And there’s no question that the messages have sometimes been mixed.
Cruz: The Pope was coming to Chile in 2018, in January, and there wasn’t the excitement that you would expect.
Very few people lining up the streets to welcome him.
Thompson: One of the disappointments of Francis’ Papacy has been his initial slow reaction to the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors.
Ivereigh: To understand, in January, 2015, Pope Francis announced that he had appointed a Bishop, Juan Barros, to be head of the Diocese in the South of Chile.
And this was met with tremendous dismay, because Juan Barros had been very close to the serial priest abuser in Chile, Fernando Karadima.
Cruz: Fernando Karadima was one of the most powerful priests in Chile in the 80’s and 90’s.
Ivereigh: Karadima was eventually discovered to be abusive and was tried by the Vatican in 2001, and victims claimed that Barros had even witnessed or been present, when some of that abuse took place.
Cruz: I was 15 years-old when my dad died, so I was very lost and so, a family friend said, ‘Why don’t you go talk to this wonderful priest, who’s going to help you?’
And it was Fernando Karadima.
He was an awful man and abused me for eight years.
Chilean Bishops forever had a culture of abuse, coverup and clericalism.
So, the Pope was completely blindfolded and lied to by the bishops.
Thompson: The Bishops in Chile had told Francis that this was not true.
Ivereigh: Francis decided to believe that Barros was innocent, and stuck by him at enormous costs to his reputation, particularly among victims groups, who simply couldn’t understand why he had made this decision.
Thompson: And so when he goes to Chile, he responds very angrily.
He tells reporters, “this is not true, this is wrong.”
It’s one of the few times, I think, we’ve really seen Francis angered.
Cruz: He said victims or survivors were lying.
I almost died to see the Pope call me a liar.
Thompson: There is such a backlash, that he goes back to Rome and appoints an investigator to look into the issue.
Scicluna: I have come to Chile, sent by Pope Francis to collect useful information concerning Juan Barros Madrid, Bishop of Osorno.
Cruz: Monsignor Scicluna, who’s the top cop in the Vatican, interviewed me.
I spoke to them for four and a half hours.
And after my interview, 80 or 90 people went to speak to them, to tell them the stories of abuse in the Chilean Church.
Ivereigh: The priest came back with a devastating report, as a result of which, Francis called the entire Chilean hierarchy to Rome.
And they presented their resignations to him en bloc.
And among those of course, whose resignations he would accept would be Juan Barros.
(slow dramatic music) Cruz: Suddenly, I get a call, the Pope would like you to come to the Vatican, because he’s horrified by this.
I couldn’t believe it.
I was waiting in the lobby, and suddenly I see this white figure coming towards me and saying, “Hi, Juan Carlos, I want to say sorry for what the Church has done to you.”
Imagine the Pope speaking to you like that?
I was fighting tears, you know.
Ivereigh: It wasn’t the first time Popes have apologized, but I think, so heartfelt, you know, where he just said, I just got this wrong.
That was certainly unusual.
Thompson: This is what’s extraordinary about Francis.
It’s a problem he denied in Chile, but learned about, and realized he was wrong, and did something about.
However the actions he’s taken are not enough for survivors.
McDonnell: In 1981, I was abused by ex-priest Francis Trogger.
McDonnell: My parents were devout Catholics, and I was one of those young altar boys.
There were two abusive priests within the parish.
And they would see who were the vulnerable children.
I found my anesthetic in the form of alcohol at the age of twelve.
And I went through two failed marriages, multitude of lost jobs.
It was not until I got sober at the age of 35 that I disclosed what had happened to me.
Thompson: In 2018, a Pennsylvania Grand Jury report came out, that found that for decades, more than 300 priests had abused over a thousand children.
The report also laid bare how much the Church knew, and that 1,000 figure was really shocking!
Just shocking!
McDonnell: Bishops minimized the abuse and tried to put out those fires before it reached John Paul, Benedict and Francis.
I think Francis owes a visit back to the United States to address this issue, and this issue alone.
(soft dramatic music) Ivereigh: Francis’ response was to write a letter confronting clericalism, the culture of entitlement, the kind of corruption that happens with rock stars and wealthy people, where you come to believe that you are special and where you fail, frankly, to realize when you’re exploiting people.
Thompson: He organizes the first sex abuse summit in 2019, which brings Bishops from all around the world to hear about this problem.
And it’s the first time the Catholic Church has said, this is a global problem that we must do something about.
McDonnell: But the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops are rebelling and not really taking to heart what Francis has to say.
The Bishops here are still policing themselves, and we see the results of what happens when an institution polices themselves.
Grand jury reports tell us that story.
Thompson: The first thing people look at in the Catholic Church say, ‘Well, priests are celibate.
So, if there wasn’t celibacy, then there wouldn’t be the abuse of minors.’
That’s not true.
There’s a sickness in someone, that makes them abuse a child.
In June 2021, Francis issues new, major revisions to the Church’s policies around sex abuse.
And they include removing the discretion that had allowed Bishops and religious superiors to ignore or cover up abuse.
Now anyone in a position of authority within the Church, both priest and the laity will be held responsible if they fail to properly investigate or sanction predator priests.
If the Bishops don’t report sex crimes to the Church, now the bishops can be removed from office.
These are the most extensive revisions to Catholic Church Law in four decades.
(slow music) Emma Graham: In the first and second chapters of Genesis, we learn that, humanity is created in the image and likeness of God.
Humanity is so diverse.
Each of us image God in a unique way.
And so the Church cannot be an effective image of God in the world, if the Church does not reflect that diversity of humanity.
(slow piano music) Randy Boyagoda: He has selected Cardinals from outside the normal regions, widened the sense of who is involved in, kind of, contributing to the leadership of the worldwide Church.
Father Spadaro: Cardinal Gregory is now Cardinal, Archbishop of Washington.
He plays a very important leadership role.
He comes from a community never very relevant in the Church.
A prophetic sign for the future of the whole Church in the USA.
(dramatic music) Morello: I think it’s inspiring for people in Africa or in Asia saying, ‘Okay, we should have a world theology.
We should be able to name God with our own stories, with our own narratives.
And I think Latin American Catholicism has been doing that.
(crowd chanting) Paredes: It is a source of joy to see that finally, our Church is breaking away from being Euro-centered.
And is looking to the south, and is looking around the world.
Spadaro: A thing that strikes me, when I follow Francis on his travels, is his desire to create not only a brotherhood.
His speeches aren’t exclusively addressed to the Christians.
(slow piano music) Ivereigh: When he went to Iraq and sat with Al Sistani, the revered figure of the Sunni Muslim world, they made a common declaration, committing themselves to respecting each other’s rights and peace.
One of the things that Francis has sought to confront is the way in which Islamic terrorism has provoked a nationalist populous reaction.
Francis has broken through that by forming an alliance with the leading Muslims in this world, in which they stand together and declare that both Christianity and Islam believe in a God of peace and a God of love, and therefore, terrorism is unacceptable, but so too is xenophobia, and that kind of instrumentalization of religion.
Pope Francis: It is my duty to build bridges and to help all men and women, in any way possible, to do the same.
(polite applause) Graham: Pope or, Pontifex means a bridge.
And so the Pope is a bridge between God and the people.
Thompson: What Francis has done is he has stripped away the issues and controversies, if you will, and brought the Catholic Church to the basic message of Jesus.
Ivereigh: And by focusing so relentlessly on love and mercy, where he really has changed the game, by going to the heart of the gospel.
Zampini-Davies: It was a sign of God that the Cardinals elected a person with these characteristics.
It was Providence.
Ivereigh: He’s gracious, he trusts you, he gives you freedom, but then he works really hard to make sure that you succeed.
And I think that’s a wonderful definition of a great leader.
Cruz: I think he will leave a mark in the Church, of more openness, of more humanity.
Cruz: I’ve never seen someone so understanding, so loving, so amazing, like Pope Francis.