Pilgrimage

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis on March 13, 2013, Mark Shriver found himself fascinated with this humble, charismatic, and authentic leader. What led this Argentine to become a priest? What struggles had shaped him? And what could his past tell us about his plans for the future of the Catholic Church? Mark Shriver was brought up as a Catholic-both his father, Sargent Shriver, and his mother, Eunice Kennedy, were faithful Catholics-but he had long since...
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When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis on March 13, 2013, Mark Shriver found himself fascinated with this humble, charismatic, and authentic leader. What led this Argentine to become a priest? What struggles had shaped him? And what could his past tell us about his plans for the future of the Catholic Church?

Mark Shriver was brought up as a Catholic-both his father, Sargent Shriver, and his mother, Eunice Kennedy, were faithful Catholics-but he had long since grown disillusioned with the Church. Watching Pope Francis, though, Shriver was intrigued. Would this pope put the Catholic Church on a new path? What would that mean for Catholics around the world?

Sparked by a renewed sense of faith (as well as personal curiosity), Shriver traveled to Buenos Aires, where Bergoglio was born, to meet with the men and women who remembered him as a child, as a young man and Jesuit priest, and later as a Bishop. Shriver visits the confessional where Bergoglio first felt called to religion and a faith-based life hears about Bergoglio's early job as a clerk at a hosiery factory learns about the female biochemist-who co-founded the Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo before she was tragically "disappeared"-whom he credits with shaping his work ethic and spirit of dedication visits Bergoglio's first, incredibly humble parish- a church that was a converted vegetable shed deep in the barrios-or slums-of Buenos Aires speaks with the men and women who still remember Bergoglio with great fondness.