The Pope Francisco turns 84 years this Thursday and will be celebrating eighth birthday since he was elected Pope, a celebration on this occasion will be marked by the pandemic of the new coronavirus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Although no special event appears on the Vatican agenda this Thursday, it is foreseeable that the Pope will celebrate it by working, as in previous years, complying with his usual appointment schedule.
On his previous birthday, Bergoglio received thousands of emails, social media messages, and congratulatory letters from citizens and religious leaders, also from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
In recent years, Francis has not stopped asking people to pray for him and has also shown his desire for an “old age”, a seat of wisdom, “calm, religious, fruitful and joyful”, as he expressed during the Mass with the Cardinals on December 17, 2016.
This Thursday will be his eighth birthday inside the Leonine Wall, but he spent many on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in his hometown, Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Bergoglio, born in 1936, the son of Piedmontese emigrants, has a passion for music, particularly for the Opera, which he continued on the radio every Saturday morning, and for football.
He studied and learned various trades and later graduated as a chemical technician, but the horizon of his life changed and in 1958 he entered the seminary choosing to carry out his novitiate among the Jesuit Fathers.
It was during this period that a nurse saved her life by convincing a doctor to give her the correct dose of antibiotic to treat pneumonia. In 1969 he was ordained a priest. That day, his grandmother Rosa gave him a letter, addressed to all his grandchildren.
The young Jorge Mario kept it in the breviary: “Have a long and happy life. But if in a few days the pain, illness or loss of a loved one fills you with despair, remember that a sigh before the Tabernacle, where the greatest and most venerable martyr is, and a look at Mary, who is at the foot of the cross will be able to drop a drop of balm on the deepest and most painful wounds ”.
In 1973 he was appointed provincial of the Jesuits of Argentina; in 1992 he received the episcopal ordination and on February 28, 1998 he was appointed archbishop of Buenos Aires, primate of Argentina. In the consistory of February 21, 2001, John Paul II created him a cardinal.
On March 13, 2013 Bergoglio became the first Pope to come from the Americas, the first Jesuit and the first to choose the name of Francis , as the Saint of Assisi who cared for the poor, the least, the sick and the creatures of Earth, the same concerns that are marking your pontificate.
