born Jorge Mario Bergoglio;
17 December 1936) is the 266th and
current Pope of the Catholic Church,
having been elected Bishop of Rome and
absolute Sovereign of the Vatican City
State .
Born in Buenos Aires , Argentina , as the
son of Italian parents, Bergoglio worked
briefly as a chemical technician and
nightclub bouncer before entering the
seminary . He was ordained a priest in
1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was
Argentina's Provincial Superior of the
Society of Jesus. He became the
Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, and
was created a Cardinal in 2001. Following
the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on
28 February 2013, the subsequent papal
conclave elected Bergoglio as his
successor on 13 March. He chose the
papal name Francis in honor of Saint
Francis of Assisi . Francis is the first Jesuit
Pope, the first Pope from the Americas,
the first Pope from the Southern
Hemisphere , and the first non-European
Pope since Pope Gregory III, 1272 years
earlier.H b d Padre