Jorge Mario Bergoglio: Challenges Before 266th Pope of Roman Catholic Church

The world had had a few seconds to prepare itself. The French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran who made the announcement Habemus Papem — in medieval Latin revealed two things. The first was the name Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The second was the name he had chosen — Francis.

Francis, the first pope from Latin America and the first from the Jesuit order, bowed to the crowds in St Peter's Square and asked for their blessing in a hint of the humble style he cultivated while trying to modernize Argentina’s conservative church and move past a messy legacy of alleged complicity during the rule of the military junta of 1976-83.

About New Pope

Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital city, December 17, 1936. He studied and received a master's degree in chemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, but later decided to become a Jesuit priest and studied at the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto. He also studied liberal arts in Santiago, Chile, and in 1960 earned a degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of Buenos Aires. Between 1964 and 1965 he was a teacher of literature and psychology at Inmaculada high school in the province of Santa Fe, and in 1966 he taught the same courses at the prestigious Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires.

In 1967, he returned to his theological studies and was ordained a priest Dec. 13, 1969. After his perpetual profession as a Jesuit in 1973, he became master of novices at the Seminary of Villa Barilari in San Miguel. Later that same year, he was elected superior of the Jesuit province of Argentina.

In 1980, he returned to San Miguel as a teacher at the Jesuit school, a job rarely taken by a former provincial superior. In May 1992 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He was one of three auxiliaries and he kept a low profile, spending most of his time caring for the Catholic university, counseling priests and preaching and hearing confessions. In June 1997, he was named coadjutor archbishop. He was installed as the new archbishop of Buenos Aires in February 1998. Since 1998, he has been archbishop of Buenos Aires, where his style is low-key and close to the people.

Francis, the son of middle-class Italian immigrants, came close to becoming pope during the last conclave in 2005. He reportedly gained the second-highest vote total in several rounds of voting before he bowed out of the running before selection of Vatican insider Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI.

With the name Bergoglio, we knew some decisive changes had been set in train. The Archbishop of Buenos Aires is the first non-European pope for 1,000 years. He is the first pope from the New World, most specifically from Latin America where the majority of the planet’s 1.2 billion Catholics live. He is the first pope ever from the Jesuits, the order renowned for having produced some of the most intellectually profound, and often free-thinking, church minds over the centuries.

With the name Francis came a signal of another new departure. No pope had ever before taken the name of the great saint of the poor, Francis of Assisi. And Bergoglio was known for his commitment to social justice and his championing of the poor of his native Argentina in the teeth of a global economic crisis whose cost fell chiefly upon the shoulders of the most vulnerable.

Seventy-six-year-old Bergoglio, it was known, was a humble man who had moved out of his archiepiscopal palace and into a simple apartment. He gave up his chauffeur-driven car and takes the bus to work. He cooks his own meals.

Unlike many of the other papal contenders, Bergoglio never held a top post inside the Vatican administration, or curia. This outsider status could pose obstacles in attempts to reform the Vatican, which has been hit with embarrassing disclosures from leaked documents alleging financial cover-ups and internal feuds.
But the conclave appeared more swayed by Bergoglio's reputation for compassion on issues such as poverty and the effects of globalization, and his fealty to traditional church teachings such as opposition to birth control.
His overriding image, though, is built around his leaning toward austerity. The motto chosen for his archdiocese is "Miserando Atque Eligendo,'' or "Lowly but Chosen.''
Even after he became Argentina's top church official in 2001, he never lived in the ornate church mansion where Pope John Paul II stayed when visiting the country, preferring a simple bed in a downtown building, warmed by a small stove on frigid weekends when the building turned off the heat. For years, he took public transportation around the city, and cooked his own meals. Yet Bergoglio has been tough on hard-line conservative views among his own clerics, including those who refused to baptize the children of unmarried women.

Charges Against New Pope             

Bergoglio, whose official name is Pope Francis, without a Roman numeral, also was accused of turning his back on a family that lost five relatives to state terror, including a young woman who was five months' pregnant before she was kidnapped and killed in 1977. The De la Cuadra family appealed to the leader of the Jesuits in Rome, who urged Bergoglio to help them; Bergoglio then assigned a monsignor to the case. Months passed before the monsignor came back with a written note from a colonel: The woman had given birth in captivity to a girl who was given to a family "too important'' for the adoption to be reversed.

Despite this written evidence in a case he was personally involved with, Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he didn't know about any stolen babies until well after the dictatorship was over.

Preferences and Actions

His preference to remain in the wings, however, has been challenged by rights activists seeking answers about church actions during the dictatorship after the 1976 coup, often known as Argentina's "Dirty War.'' Many Argentines remain angry over the church's acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements'' in society. It is one reason why more than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but less than 10 percent regularly attend Mass.

Under Bergoglio's leadership, Argentina's bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church's failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era's violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.

Challenges before Pope

Pope Francis will have a tough job ahead of him. The Catholic Church has been seen as an organisation facing the pressure of modernisation. It has been scarred by child sex abuse scandals and in recent years, also by infighting, even corruption in the Vatican bureaucracy. The new pontiff is not a Vatican insider. This could well be to his advantage as he uses his dedication, energy and skills to clean up what his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, called the “filth” in the church. Pope Francis must build on his known love for the poor and his association with the area that has the largest number of Catholics in the world to leave a lasting legacy.

The former Bishop of Buenos Aires is the first non-European Pope in the modern era; he is the first Pope to hail from Latin America, the first Jesuit to hold the revered post; and he is also the first to take on the name ‘Francis’ after St Francis of Assisi. That is not all. During the course of his first public appearance itself, Pope Francis I broke with tradition — not once but twice — as he refused to stand upon a pedestal that would elevate him above the other Cardinals who stood by him. Instead, he chose to “stay down here”, and surprised many again when he asked the people to pray for him first, before he blessed the crowd. On both the occasions that the newly named Pope steered away from convention, he appeared to strengthen his image as a humble pastor, not given to the pomp of the Vatican, but instead, committed to serving his people — much like his namesake St Francis of Assisi who chose to live in poverty and who remains one of the most beloved figures in Catholic history even though he was never ordained into Catholic priesthood.

One of the most important challenges before Pope Francis will be to bring the faithful back to the fold. Particularly in the Western world, which has traditionally been the heart of Christendom, the Catholic Church has lost much of its following as an increasing number of people have been moving away from institutionalized religion. Much of this problem is of the Church's own making. For example, in recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has been associated with sex abuse scandals across the world and rampant corruption within the Vatican. In fact, Pope Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had come under much criticism for his alleged efforts to overlook sexual assaults that priests had committed on children. Yet, it remains unclear if Pope Francis will take up the kind of zero tolerance policy against such crimes as many would want him to.

Demand of the Situation

The list of trials facing Catholicism is as long as it is daunting: plummeting church attendance and a massive shortage of new priests in the secular West; a widening theological chasm between the developed and developing world over what is socially acceptable; inter-religious animosity and distrust; the seemingly ever-recurring sex abuse scandals and a Vatican bureaucracy that all but the most naïve of commentators will admit is riven with corruption, incompetence and political infighting.

Similarly, it is also to be seen if Pope Francis will respond to the reformist within him — a hallmark of Jesuit priests — and introduce changes in the Catholic Church's policies toward key social issues such as contraception, abortion and gay rights. For example, Pope Francis had earlier said that contraceptives could be used to prevent the spread of AIDS, but has stayed away from endorsing the use of contraceptives in general, in keeping with official Church policy.

While many will look for signs of change from the new Pope, and there are already some departures from tradition, a look at his record shows that Cardinal Bergoglio, who belongs to the Jesuit order, is theologically conservative and supportive of the Vatican’s positions on major issues. He is against abortion, gay marriage and the ordination of women. However, the energy with which he has devoted himself to his flock as Archbishop of Buenos Aires has often been praised.

How Pope Francis will prioritize these problems remains to be seen but he will need to tackle them nonetheless. Pope Francis is both a continuation of the past and something very different. Theologically he is an orthodox conservative like his predecessor. No-one will be expecting him to take the Catholic Church into a brave new world where homosexuality is suddenly accepted and women are ordained.

Health, Development and Human Rights in India

The improvement in the indices of health and development for India has been incredible. Yet for millions hunger is routine and the loss of their livelihoods not newsworthy. While medical services impact the health of individuals, the factors associated with longevity of populations are social and economic.
Education and sponsorship which determine access to work contribute to occupational inequality, which, in turn, leads to socioeconomic outcomes. These sequences operate as a cycle of relative socioeconomic privilege and deprivation transmitting inequalities from one generation to the text.
In fact, health and economic development are dynamically interlinked. Low-income countries have poor healthcare facilities. On the other hand, a high proportion of the population with ill health breeds poverty as these societies lack the basic tools such as medicine, fertilizer, credit, etc., to move out of deprivation through development.
However, the relationship between economic development and income inequality takes the form of an inverted U-turn. Income inequality increases during the early phase of development when the main mechanism of growth is the increase in physical capitals and the fact that resources are allocated to those who save and invest. During later stages of development, this inequality reduces on account of mass education, rural-to-urban and agriculture-to-industry migration and also due to social policies of Governments of mature economies which invest in human capital. The income inequality during the early phase, in fact, exacerbates poverty.
However, rising inequality will eventually put pressure on the Government to rectify the situation using the high incomes attained in the later stages of development. The disparities, as is currently happening in India, tend to split society.
Vulnerability to Ill-Health
The World Health Organization (WHO) has argued that health and human rights are inextricably linked. Violation of human rights can have serious health consequences. Vulnerability to ill-health can be reduced by taking steps to protect such rights (rights to healthy education, housing and freedom from discrimination). It argues that we need to apply a human rights-based approach to health care.
Nevertheless, human rights largely remain the concern of specialist lawyers in the country. In recent years, however, there is increased recognition in the public health community that human rights provide a useful framework for ensuring the conditions in which people can be healthy.
Improvement in health care has been an important part in the overall strategy for socioeconomic development over the planning period. Significant demographic changes and epidemiology shifts have occurred but the health scenario in India is still at crossroads with a wide gap between demand and supply of health services. Some measures of success have been achieved on the communities diseases especially in the case of tuberculosis and leprosy in the case of vector borne diseases, concerted efforts are being made both the Central and State Government under the program while under AIDS, the major strategy has been to build up infrastructure and go in for targeted interventions.
As far as development is concerned, the vibrant economy is a reflection of success of India’s middle and upper classes. They form the engine which is driving the country’s development and evoke the image of a shining India. The hope is that the growth of the economy will also uplift the poor, albeit in a trickle-down effect. While poverty based on headcount has reduced, deprivation, defined as the disparity between base and mean consumption, is increasing in the country.

Model for Human Rights
In the present situation, human rights have attained a new meaning—an accepted phenomenon now. But the irony is that everything encompassed by the motion of human rights is subject of controversy.
India is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948, just a year after the country attained Independence. It signified the new republic’s resolve to follow the path of democracy, which would ensure human rights to its citizens, despite doubts expressed by leading statesmen of developed democracies about the success of such an experiment in India.
India’s venture was unique in many respects. Democracy was adopted in many countries after completing the phase of industrialization with the launching of the first Five-Year Plan in 1951, and soon after held a general election, on the basis of adult franchise.
Many advanced western nations introduced women suffrage and voting rights to all citizens much after the India did. India has the most diversity in the world—religious, linguistic and racial—united under a democratic set-up.
Yet, threats to individual freedom are formidable. Religious intolerance, caste tensions, regional chauvinism, terror threats, detentions without trial, poverty amidst plenty, crime against women, custodial deaths, corruption in public life and attendant evils constantly violate human rights.
The promise that India had initially showed in the field of human rights and the type of democratic institutions it has evolved, has won it international recognition. For these reasons, it was elected a member of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, which had replaced the Commission on Human Rights in June 2006 by securing 173 out of 191 votes of the UN General Assembly, the maximum number of votes.
The rights of the poor can never compete against the might of the rich. The huge toll on the underprivileged during the initial stages of development needs to be factored into the country’s economic planning. Macroeconomic policies which protect sectors of the economy which are not able to face the sudden opening up of markets and a phased and carefully planned changeover.
The promotion of the healthcare, social and economic right of the poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. We should think about human rights in the context of India’s public health. It needs to be realized that a higher standard of human rights is in the best national interest. India need not search for a model elsewhere. It should aspire to be a model for others.