Argentina says Goodbye to Pope Francis: Buenos Aires’ Homegrown Holy Leader

Pope Francis’ death at 88 on the heels of a busy Holy Week 2025 sent shockwaves of sorrow throughout Buenos Aires, where his legacy of service touched countless lives.

“He was close to this community and always present.

People appreciated it very much,” says Father Sebastian Risso, a parish priest in Villa 20, a Buenos Aires shantytown.

Francis was called the ‘Papa de la Villa‘ due to his focus on the poor during his 15 years as Arch Bishop in Buenos Aires.

The ‘Slum Pope’s’ Legacy in Buenos Aires’ Poor Neighborhoods

Argentines waited more than a decade for the ‘Slum Pope’ to come home to the villas once again after he left in 2013 to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

But with his death in Rome on Monday at the age of 88 after a long illness, that visit will never come.

The death of the first Latin American pontiff closes the door on what had become one of the great unresolved stories of his papacy: why he never returned to the country of his birth.

Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, left Buenos Aires in 2013 to lead the Roman Catholic Church—and never looked back.

Despite global travels and pastoral visits to over 50 countries, he avoided Argentina entirely, a fact that became both a curiosity and a quiet source of national frustration.

“One of the great curiosities of his papacy was the fact that, unlike his predecessors, Francis never visited his native country,” said Jimmy Burns, author of Francis, Pope of Good Promise, speaking to Reuters weeks before the pontiff’s death.

Pope Francis’ Final Easter and Farewell

More than a decade after he was elected pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio remained consistent in his message of compassion for the downtrodden and his calls for peace.

True to form, his final public appearance, delivered on Easter Sunday 2025, was not centered on legacy, but on solidarity.

Appearing in St. Peter’s Square just weeks after being hospitalized for double pneumonia, the 88-year-old pontiff blessed a crowd of more than 35,000 from the Popemobile, greeting them with the resilience of someone who never quite gave in to the trappings of power.

He had only been discharged from Rome’s Gemelli hospital on March 23, after 38 days of treatment and what the Vatican described as a “protected discharge.”

That Easter morning, Francis gave what would be his final Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

In it, he once again urged the faithful to resist indifference and to open their hearts—especially to those often left outside of societal concern.

“On this day,” he said, “I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas!

For all of us are children of God!”

His words carried both political and spiritual weight.

He condemned the “great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day,” and specifically called out the violence directed toward women, children, migrants, and the vulnerable.

He made a heartfelt plea for an end to ongoing global conflicts, naming Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, and several regions across Africa and the Middle East.

Francis also noted the symbolic importance of Easter 2025, a year in which both Catholic and Orthodox Christians celebrated the Resurrection on the same day—a rare alignment he hoped would, “let the light of peace radiate from the Holy Sepulchre… over all the Holy Land and the entire world.”

Shortly before his death, he had met briefly with U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Casa Santa Marta residence in a private encounter that was neither detailed nor politicized.

If it marked any final gesture, it was simply another example of Francis’ belief in dialogue — even where official outcomes are opaque.

The current government, led by President Javier Milei has brought relative stability to Argentina’s long-flailing economy through severe austerity measures.

Milei, who once labeled Francis “the devil’s representative on Earth,” softened his tone after taking office.

“It is with profound sorrow that I learned this sad morning that Pope Francis, Jorge Bergoglio, passed away today and is now resting in peace.

Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his kindness and wisdom was a true honor for me.

As President, as an Argentine, and, fundamentally, as a man of faith, I bid farewell to the Holy Father and stand with all of us who are today dealing with this sad news. RIP.,” Milei wrote on social media platform X.

The Pope’s last Easter was a portrait of the man himself: determined, unpretentious, and defiantly human in the face of frailty.

A Humble Shepard Until the End

For a pope who had once taken the Buenos Aires subway Line D down to the Metropolitan Cathedral to work in Buenos Aires and reused his predecessor’s robes, this final act of appearing publicly — despite obvious physical weakness — was an extension of the same message: the shepherd must walk among his flock.

As the news of his death spread, so too did tributes from both world leaders and ordinary people throughout Argentina — those who remembered not only his stances on social justice or his confrontations with presidents but also the quiet defiance with which he carried himself, from the barrios of Buenos Aires to the Vatican balcony.

When he was still in Buenos Aires they knew him simply as Bergoglio, or Father Jorge.

He would wash the feet of the poor, give confessions and hold communion in the most downtrodden neighborhoods.

A church in which priests would actively engage marginalized communities was part of Bergoglio’s missionary vision.

After being appointed Bishop of Rome in 2013 his objectives remained the same.

The world was intrigued as he spent his first Holy Thursday as Pope, washing the feet of prisoners instead of priests.

For those who knew him as Father Jorge, Argentina’s Cardinal, it came as little surprise.

“He hasn’t changed,” says Risso in an interview before the Pope’s death.

“He does the same things he did in Buenos Aires.”

Pope Francis’ Early Life

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936 in the working-class barrio of Flores, Buenos Aires.

Though by birth a Porteño, or native of Buenos Aires, friends referred to him as ‘Tano‘ (the Argentine version of ‘Guido’), since he spoke Italian.

Bergoglio’s father was from Piedmont in Northern Italy, having moved to Argentina with his parents to build a life away from Benito Mussolini’s regime.

Nonna Rosa: An Inspiration for Faith

Bergoglio developed a special connection with the Catholic faith thanks to his grandmother, Doña Rosa Margherita Vasallo de Bergoglio.

“It was my grandmother who taught me to pray,” he said in a 2012 radio interview with Father Juan Isasmendi on the community radio of Villa 21, Buenos Aires.

“She taught me a lot about faith and told me stories about the saints.”

Nonna Rosa was not an ordinary Catholic; she inspired Bergoglio with her particular brand of religious activism.

In Italy, she had been a member of Catholic Action, an anti-fascist movement created by Italian bishops to speak out against Mussolini’s regime in the 1920s.

Thanks to her influence — but against the wishes of his mother — Bergoglio joined the Immaculate Conception Seminary at the age of 19 to study theology.

Throughout his studies, Bergoglio held a long list of alternative job titles and interests outside of the faith.

He worked as a janitor, lab technician, and, at one point, a bar bouncer.

Like many other Argentines in their late teens, he enjoyed dancing tango with his friends and watching his favorite soccer team, San Lorenzo, one of Argentina’s ‘Big Five’ teams play matches at their stadium in Boedo.

Bergoglio, The Jesuits, and the Dirty War

In 1958, at the age of 21, Bergoglio entered the Society of Jesus as a novice and two years later he officially joined the order, taking the vow of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Bergoglio spent his first few years with the Society of Jesus teaching and studying at universities.

He rose quickly within the hierarchy and became the Provincial Superior of Argentina by the time he was 36 years old.

Later on, Bergoglio attributed missteps and an over-authoritarian style during this controversial time of his career to his age and inexperience.

Bergoglio faced both internal and external challenges when he came to the order, first while Juan Domingo Péron was president and then after the 1976 coup d’état.

Throughout the years of the bloody war in Argentina, the military dictatorship began disappearing those they believed to be sympathizers of left-wing political ideology.

The Jesuits came under threat because of the particular brand of liberation theology they followed.

This Latin American movement, which began in the 1950s, encouraged priests to focus their work on supporting the poor in fighting political and economic oppression.

At the time, Pope John Paul believed the Jesuits were attaching the gospel too closely to social causes.

He feared the ‘slum priests’ like Bergoglio were conspiring with guerrilla movements, so he sent orders to disband their work.

Bergoglio was later criticized for failing to protect two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, after they were arrested and tortured.

The pair had disobeyed Bergoglio’s orders to live outside of the slums, although he allowed them to continue working there.

Controversial Argentine investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky released a report suggesting Bergoglio colluded with the dictatorship.

An Argentine human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint in 2005 that contained few details and went nowhere, even after Bergoglio testified.

Pagina 12, the newspaper that published Verbitsky’s accusations, has since removed the articles.

Bergoglio denied the charges but admitted that the church could have done more to protect those killed.

He had bishops issue a collective apology in 2012 for the church’s failures to protect people during Argentina’s dictatorship.

The apology blamed both the government and leftist guerrillas for the violence.

‘Bergoglio’s List: How a Young Francis Defied a Dictatorship and Saved Dozens of Lives’ claims that was quite the opposite: that Bergoglio had worked in secret throughout those years to protect priests and help those captured.

Argentine Jesuit Father Juan Manuel Scannone said in the book, “It took us years to realize the complete truth about Father Jorge’s rescue efforts.”

Soon after his appointment, Pope Francis ordered the Vatican to open its files for an investigation into the Dirty War era, to discover the fate of at least some of the estimated 30,000 victims.

Cardinal Bergoglio’s Popularity in Buenos Aires

Bergoglio’s early leadership and resistance to the Marxist to undertones of liberation theology fostered an ideological divide among the Jesuits in Argentina.

But after a humbling personal transformation during a five-year church-imposed exile in Germany and later Cordoba, Argentina Francis returned to Buenos Aires, where he earned the adoration and support of much of the local clergy, especially young clergy.

As bishop and later archbishop, he gained a reputation as approachable and down to earth, never too busy to advise the younger priests.

“One feature that stands out in terms of dealing with priests is that he was always willing to assist us immediately,” says Risso, who first met Bergoglio after entering the seminary in 1998.

Bergoglio is famed for having a phone installed in his home so that priests could call him at any time of day.

‘A church that stays in the sacristy too long gets sick’ was one of Bergoglio’s catchphrases.

For the future pontiff, the most important thing was breaking down the walls of the church, dismantling any perception of a hierarchy, and being accessible.

This coupled with the Jesuit vow of poverty, meant that he lived life as humbly as possible and among the people.

As archbishop, he could be spotted traveling to work on Buenos Aires’ subte and lived in an austere room.

When he was appointed cardinal in 2001, he had his predecessor’s robes tailored rather than buying new ones and refused to have meals prepared for him.

People in the most impoverished communities of Buenos Aires, a city where class divides run deep, noticed.

In ‘Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio,’ a bricklayer from the parish of Our Lady of Caacupe in the Barracas neighborhood demonstrates the relationship he had with parishioners.

“I am proud of you,” said the man to Bergogolio, “because when I came here with my companions on the bus I saw you sitting in one of the last seats like one of us.

I told them it was you, but no one believed me.”

Not everyone in Argentina was a fan of Bergoglio however.

It was well-known that Bergoglio had a hostile relationship with the ex-president and current vice president, Cristina Kirchner.

Their fiercest public clash was over Argentina’s legalization of gay marriage in 2010.

Bergoglio called it “a plan to destroy God’s plan.”

Kirchner was perturbed enough to address the issue while on a high-stakes trip to Beijing, describing Bergoglio’s comments as, “reminiscent of the times of the Inquisition.”

Their conflict was more deeply rooted than this single issue however and stretched across both Kirchner administrations.

Following the economic crash of 2001, Bergoglio openly denounced the increasing levels of poverty in Argentina.

He frequently spoke out against ‘unrestrained capitalism’ and the ‘neo-liberalism’ that he said led to the crisis.

The government saw his comments as a thinly veiled attack.

Néstor Kirchner described him as the ‘spiritual head of the political opposition’ shortly before he died in 2010.

Eventually, relations became so strained that both Kirchner administrations stopped the customary attendance to his annual ‘Te Deum’ prayer service to avoid listening to his criticisms.

Cristina Kirchner never attended one sermon while in office nor invited Bergoglio to meet with her in the Casa Rosada, (Argentina’s Government House) even though it’s just a one-minute walk across the Plaza de Mayo from the Cathedral.

After he was appointed Pope, the relationship between the two outwardly improved as Bergoglio’s newly found global influence meant his popularity soared and Cristina took every opportunity to associate with him.

Argentina’s next president, Mauricio Macri also displeased Bergoglio over gay rights while he served as mayor of Buenos Aires.

While it’s been widely circulated that early in Macri’s career he called homosexuality a ‘sickness’ in an early television interview, as mayor Macri did not challenge a ruling in favor of a gay couple’s right to marry at city hall.

Allowing the ruling to stand paved the way for legal gay marriage in Argentina.

Macri, a practicing Catholic, was a loyal follower and attended Francis’ inauguration in Rome while still serving as mayor.

As a Peronist sympathizer, Francis had a deeper relationship with Macri’s opponent, former Buenos Aires governor and vice president under Néstor Kirchner, Daniel Scioli, who ran in an unsuccessful bid for President himself in 2015.

In an audience at the Vatican a few days before elections, Francis asked Argentines ‘to vote with their conscience,’ which Scioli touted as an endorsement of his campaign.

After Macri won the 2015 presidential race by a small margin, the media questioned why the pope did not call to congratulate him.

Francis said it wasn’t normal protocol to do so, although he also surely recalls Macri’s days as a ‘tabloid playboy’ on the elite Argentine social scene and clearly disliked the free-market ideology that made Macri a millionaire.

Further complicating their relationship were accusations that swirled around the First Lady, Juliana Awada, daughter of Syrian immigrants turned successful businesswoman.

Awada has dodged complaints for years that her textile company uses sweatshop labor in clandestine factories — in the very same Buenos Aires neighborhoods where Francis worked with his most faithful.

Pope Francis: A New Direction for the Catholic Church?

“Francis, rebuild my church.”

According to the Bible, these were the words of Christ on the cross to St Francis of Assisi and likely what the cardinals had in mind when they were electing a new leader.

At the time they were submitting their votes in March 2013, the Catholic Church was facing a crisis.

The last two years of Pope Benedict XVI’s administration had been full of scandal.

Ongoing revelations of sex abuse within the church as well as personal documents leaked to the media pointed to both financial corruption and a power struggle within the Vatican.

The First Latin American Pope

The choice of Bergoglio to lead the church seemed to be a strategic departure from the status quo of the Roman Catholic church.

Over 1,200 years had passed since someone outside of Europe had been elected and it was the first time a Latin American had been chosen.

Some of the first measures that Pope Francis took as leader involved restructuring the financial handling of the Vatican.

This was part of his vision of a ‘poor church, that is for the poor,’ as he announced to the media the day after he was elected.

He told the press the same day that the name ‘Francis’ had come to him in the voting enclave itself, after a cardinal had turned to him and said, “Don’t, forget the poor.”

Tackling poverty was at the top of Bergoglio’s agenda in Buenos Aires and that didn’t change when he became pope.

In a Papal Exhortation, he called on world leaders to ‘guarantee dignified work, education and health care for everyone.’

In the same communication, he described economic inequality in the world as so severe that it could violate the sixth commandment ‘thou shall not kill.’

Pope Francis was not the first pope to call for an end to global poverty.

But why did his delivery of the message in speeches and writings make headlines around the world?

“It is his experience, his pastoral sensitivity, and his sentiment of Latin America that makes the difference,” said Risso.

As pope, Francis still repudiated the use of limousines and preferred a Ford Focus. He also never resided in the papal residence in the Apostolic Palace, instead living in a simple two-bedroom Vatican apartment.

His handlers worried that he didn’t wear a bulletproof vest and, early into his papacy, he sometimes snuck out at night to wander the streets of Rome to minister, just as he did in Buenos Aires.

Francis’ appointment repaved a social and cultural space for the Catholic Church in Latin America.

Part of the reason for this was the friendly relationship he held with Evangelicals.

South America is home to more than 40% of the world’s Catholics, but their numbers in the region have been waning for many years as many South American immigrants to Argentina from neighboring countries are of the Evangelical faith.

While still in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio had strong ties with Pentecostal priests.

As a pontiff, he described the divisions between different factions of the church as ‘the work of the devil.’

The church remains an important part of the Latin American political landscape, probably more than any other continent.

He described ‘trickle-down economics’ as ‘naive,’ and ‘the cult of money’ as ‘the worship of the golden calf.’

This terminology was music to the ears of left-wing governments and opposition parties across Latin America.

Among his supporters in Latin America was Fidel Castro, who told the pope he was considering joining the Catholic Church during a visit during an informal encounter in Havana, a year before Castro’s death.

The pope’s leverage allowed him to play an important role in the return to normalized relations between Cuba and the United States and shows the Catholic Church taking a healing role in international politics.

If his anti-consumerist, pro-ecological conservation views were received well in much of South America and other developing regions, they presented a challenge to the consciences of the wealthy Catholic contingent in the United States.

A 2015 Gallup Poll found that the pope’s approval rating among U.S. Catholics fell from 89% to 71% between 2014 and 2015, after his only visit to the United States.

Among U.S. conservatives it fell even further with all the media buzz.

The mainstream media deemed it conspicuous that Roman Catholic American jurist, Samuel Alito, the late Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia were no-shows at the pope’s historical 2015 address to a joint session of Congress.

“Pope Francis speaks extemporaneously with more frequency than his recent predecessors.

“Seemingly innocuous statements are isolated by media, then repeated throughout 24-hour news cycles in relative contextual isolation,” says Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette (USA) and contributor to the National Catholic Register.

“The distortions of casual statements, willful and otherwise, led to a feeling of disenfranchisement among traditional American Catholics.”

The Pope’s Only U.S. Visit

The pope’s 2015 address to the U.S. Congress was well-received by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and his artful comments on key issues supported the positions of both U.S. political parties.

After only uttering a few sentences, the pope received a standing ovation and had some attendees, including former Speaker of the House John Boehner and then-Senator Mark Rubio, openly weeping.

But there were other events during the visit that cause the Vatican press office to swing into damage control mode.

When Francis met with Kim Davis, a state of Kentucky County Clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, it made international headlines.

It was less widely publicized that the pope met with Yayo Grassi, an openly gay former student of his, the previous day.

Grassi and his family, including his partner, had a private audience after the pope personally called his ex-alum to arrange the meeting weeks before.

Grassi told the media that Francis knew he was gay for decades and was never judgmental about it.

Despite his struggles with politicians over gay marriage in Argentina and loyalty to church doctrine on the matter, his wider message as pope was one of inclusiveness.

He famously asked reporters on a flight back from World Youth Day in Brazil, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”

In the address, Francis highlighted the need to focus on the protection of the environment arguing that, “We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”

He was quoting directly from his encyclical letter, ‘Laudato, Si.’

Laudato Si, with its focus on ‘integral ecology’ was so controversial that part of it was leaked to the media before its release by internal Vatican sources unhappy with the contents.

It was the first encyclical to be dedicated completely to environmentalism.

Hardliners within the church believe that a pope should only discuss spiritual matters.

Pope Francis’ focus on the environment was keeping in tune with his namesake ‘St Francis of Assisi,’ the patron saint of ecology.

He showed the world “just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace” wrote Francis in Laudato Si.

If American Catholics and wealthy politicians were made uncomfortable by Francis’ focus on the environment and discourse that sounds far too socialist for those operating in the cradle of ‘unjust economic structures’, his message was initially embraced among leftist figures in the U.S.

Former U.S. Democratic presidential contender, and four-term senator, Bernie Sanders released a statement after the pope’s congressional address that read,

“Pope Francis is clearly one of the most important religious and moral leaders not only in the world today but in modern history.

“He forces us to address some of the major issues facing humanity: war, income and wealth inequality, poverty, unemployment, greed, the death penalty and other issues that too many prefer to ignore.”

The pope further highlighted his message on his U.S. trip by shunning the formal state lunch with his congressional hosts after his speech, instead choosing to dine with the homeless and give blessings at a Washington D.C. soup kitchen.

“Pope Francis makes the world a better place by advocating for the poor and reminding us of the importance of charity.

“But Catholic charity relies entirely on pursuits of profits the pope characterizes as a cause of poverty,” said Laugesen about Francis’ comments to U.S. policymakers.

“Pope Francis is a brilliant, kind, and loving man who, as Christ’s vicar on earth, cares about every man, woman and child.

“Alas, he is not an economist,” said Laugesen at the time.

After the media frenzy died down after his U.S. visit, the anti-capitalist Pope’s favorability rating improved.

According to the 2024 Gallup poll 80% of U.S. Catholics were pleased with his papacy,

Among the general public of the U.S., he only enjoyed a 58% favorable view in the year before his death.

‘A Simple Preacher’

Risso says there was no difference in the teaching of the Bergoglio he knew and the pope’s service in the Vatican, only a change of audience.

“He just preached the gospel – just a simple preacher, but it’s the Pope speaking to the U.N. and the U.S.”

And, in a difficult time, to the world.

“His way of being present – I think that changes the church,” said Father Risso before Francis’ death.

Pope Francis’ death at the close of Holy Week marked the end of a papacy that reshaped the Church’s tone more than its doctrine. He addressed world leaders but never abandoned the language of humility.

But to those who knew him from the beginning, he never stopped being the parish priest from Buenos Aires who walked among them, not above them.

“He is with the people,” says Risso, “as simple as that, like Jesus, there with the people, with the suffering ones.”

-Maral Shafafy & Ande Wanderer