Curated by Alejandro Bonet, Horacio Morel, Debora Ramos

Scientific Committee: Massimo Borghesi, Guzman Carriquiry Lecour, Julian de la Morena, Anibal Fornari, Austen Ivereigh

 

The shows offer a journey through life , formation and pastoral actions of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Who is this man chosen by the Holy Spirit to lead the boat of St. Peter? Where does this life come from? The curators will try to answer these questions, through seven steps that will develop the path (Bergoglio as a Jesuit, The thought of Bergoglio, Culture and education, Unity and Conflict, Periphery and center, Shape an identity: Aparecida, Beauty, goodness and truth ).

Bergoglio is a personality forged in faith in Christ and in belonging to the Church, with clear European roots that blend into the historical-cultural experience of the Latin American people of God, born and called in a megalopolis like Buenos Aires, in which they mix the advantages and miseries of the urbanized world.

The profession of Bergoglio was born one day in spring in Argentina, September 21, 1953, the day of St. Matthew, whose most representative expression is the picture of Matthew’s Vocation painted by Caravaggio, which deeply marks his personality expressed in his episcopal motto. “miserando atque eligendo” (he looked at him with merciful love and chose him). This vocation is deepened in belonging to the Jesuit order, especially the French ones, making the paradigmatic model of Pierre Favre, a friend of the Jesuit Ignacio and a companion in the first days of the order.
Based on Adam Mohler, he means the Church as “coincidentia oppositorum”, a vision we find in Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessard. Bergoglio is Argentinian and, at the same time, for the authors of his training and for his reference readings, profoundly European. In fact, precisely his intellectual formation allows us to understand the complex and multifaceted gaze that guides the current Pontificate.

In his training as a Jesuit, he was particularly marked by the imprint of the Jesuit Father Alberto Hurtado, today a saint who, like most of the Jesuit Chileans of his time in 1940, had begun to question the Church’s place in society. He wanted the contact with the poor to be a necessary element of Jesuit formation. Bergoglio took this model when he was Provincial of the Jesuits and rector of the Colegio Maximo.

“How I would like a poor Church for the poor!”

The Latin American meeting of the bishops in Aparecida in 2007 summarizes a process of maturation of the entire Latin American Church, where Bergoglio is the decisive protagonist.

What is the key to reading Aparecida and its common thread?

The central point, the “key to reading”, is given in the statement: “The true nature of Christianity consists in recognizing the presence of Jesus Christ and following him: this was the beautiful experience of those early disciples who, while finding Jesus, were fascinated and full of wonder for the exceptionality of those who spoke with them, the way they treated, corresponding to hunger and thirst for life that was in their hearts.It all starts with a question “What are you looking for?” that question followed the invitation to live an experience “come and see”.

The Latin American meeting of the bishops in Aparecida in 2007 summarizes a process of maturation of the entire Latin American Church, where Bergoglio is the decisive protagonist.
What is the key to reading Aparecida and its common thread?

The central point, the “key to reading”, is given in the statement: “The true nature of Christianity consists in recognizing the presence of Jesus Christ and following him: this was the beautiful experience of those early disciples who, finding Jesus, they were fascinated and full of wonder for some of those who spoke with them, the way they treated, corresponding to hunger and thirst for life that was in their hearts. It all starts with a question “What are you looking for?” that question followed the invitation to live an experience “come and see”.

The possibility that the richness of the tradition , of a faith is incarnated in history and is not lost is returning to the encounter with Christ present today.
Here is Jorge Mario Bergoglio.