50 Fun Facts About Pope Francis

In 2015, Francis became the first pope to address which body?

The US Congress. Straight after the speech he left the Capitol for a lunch with homeless people, served in a tent beside a nearby church.

Jonathan Pryce earned an Oscar nomination for playing Francis in which 2019 film?

The Two Popes. Its Sistine Chapel scenes were not shot in the Vatican: the crew rebuilt the chapel's interior, frescoes included, on a soundstage at Rome's Cinecittà studios.

Francis was the first pope from which religious order?

The Jesuits. Members of the order are meant to avoid church honours and serve the pope himself, so seeing one of them elected pope was a novelty.

After his election in 2013, how did Francis travel back to his lodgings?

On a bus with the cardinals. He waved off the papal limousine, and soon afterwards went back to the clergy hotel where he had stayed before the conclave to pay his own bill.

Francis told journalists in 2013 that he chose his papal name in honour of which saint?

Francis of Assisi. As the votes passed two-thirds, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes hugged him and said, 'Don't forget the poor,' and the saint of poverty came straight to mind.

Francis's first trip abroad as pope took him to World Youth Day in which city?

Rio de Janeiro. He told young pilgrims there that he wanted them to make noise back in their dioceses and take the Church out onto the streets.

Which of these figures did Francis declare a saint in 2016?

Mother Teresa. The Vatican had granted a special dispensation to speed up her cause, which opened within two years of her death in 1997.

Bergoglio's father emigrated from which north-western Italian region?

Piedmont. His father sailed for Buenos Aires in 1929, and the pope's sister later said the family left because of Mussolini's fascism, not for lack of money.

Before entering the seminary, Bergoglio earned a secondary-school diploma qualifying him as what?

A chemical technician. Press reports later inflated the diploma into a master's degree in chemistry, but he never took a university degree before the seminary.

Which of these jobs did the young Bergoglio hold before the priesthood?

Nightclub bouncer. He took the job to pay his way as a student, and as pope he brought it up himself in 2013 while chatting with worshippers at a parish on the edge of Rome.

At 21, after a life-threatening illness, Bergoglio had part of which organ removed?

A lung. Surgeons took out the upper part of his right lung, and decades later the Vatican had to scotch rumours that the operation was why the new pope never sang at Mass.

As a novice, Bergoglio studied the humanities in a city called Santiago, in which country?

Chile. Alongside Latin, Greek and literature at Casa Loyola, his training in Santiago made regular visits to the poor a required part of the course.

As a teenager, Bergoglio felt called to the priesthood after stopping at a church for what?

Confession. He was heading out to celebrate a spring holiday and never got there: he walked home having decided to give his life to God.

Bergoglio's 1973 pilgrimage to Jerusalem was cut short by the outbreak of which war?

The Yom Kippur War. He was back in Jerusalem as pope in May 2014, and invited the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to pray with him at the Vatican; both came.

Bergoglio spent the first three months of 1980 in which country, learning English?

Ireland. Three months of daily classes in Dublin never quite took: he later said English, above all its pronunciation, always gave him big problems because he is very tone-deaf.

On his first trip outside Rome as pope, in July 2013, Francis met migrants on which island?

Lampedusa. On arrival he threw a wreath into the sea for those drowned on the crossing, then said Mass and condemned a 'globalisation of indifference' to their fate.

Francis's motto, 'by having mercy and by choosing', comes from a homily on Jesus calling which tax collector?

Matthew. The words are the Venerable Bede's, and they mattered to Francis because he traced his own calling to St Matthew's feast day in 1953, when he was a teenager in Buenos Aires.

Francis asked Argentines planning to fly to Rome for his 2013 inauguration to do what instead?

Give the fare to the poor. That same week he told the journalists who had covered his election how he would like 'a Church which is poor and for the poor'.

As archbishop, Bergoglio doubled the number of priests working in which part of Buenos Aires?

Its slums. He would turn up in the shantytowns unannounced to chat in the street and follow Mass from a back pew, and became known as the 'villero bishop', the slum bishop.

Which pope made Bergoglio a cardinal in 2001?

John Paul II. Red hat or not, the new cardinal went on living in a simple downtown flat instead of the archbishop's residence, and cooked his own meals.

At the 2005 conclave, Bergoglio reportedly begged cardinals to do what?

Stop voting for him. A leaked diary credited him with 40 votes on the third ballot, and he is said to have begged his backers, almost in tears, to give way; the next ballot settled it.

In 2016 Francis held the first-ever meeting between a pope and the head of which church?

The Russian Orthodox Church. He and Patriarch Kirill talked for two hours in an airport VIP room, picked as neutral ground because neither Rome nor Moscow would have done.

Which Italian greeting did Francis use in his first words from the balcony of St Peter's in 2013?

Buonasera. After that plain 'good evening' he joked that his brother cardinals had gone to the ends of the earth to find Rome a bishop.

On his first balcony appearance, Francis declined which traditional garment?

The red ermine-trimmed mozzetta. He came out in a plain white cassock, and kept the cross from his Buenos Aires years in place of the gold one popes usually wear.

Instead of the papal apartments, Francis chose to live where?

The Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse. He said the papal apartment was like an inverted funnel, spacious inside but with a tight entrance, and that he could not live without people around him.

Bergoglio told a fellow cardinal that, if elected in 2005, he would have taken which papal name?

John XXIV. He said he would have been wholly inspired by John XXIII, 'the Good Pope'; nine years later, as Francis, he declared that pope a saint.

In 2016 Francis said a person who thinks only of building what 'is not Christian'?

Walls. He added 'and not of building bridges' when asked on the flight home from Mexico about Donald Trump's border plan, then said he would give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

On his first Holy Thursday as pope, where did Francis wash feet instead of a basilica?

A youth prison. Two of the twelve young inmates were women, the first a pope had included in the rite, and in 2016 he changed the rules so that parishes everywhere could do the same.

Francis's first encyclical, Lumen fidei, was largely written by whom?

Benedict XVI. He had almost finished a first draft, the last of his trilogy on faith, hope and love, when he resigned; Francis wrote that he took up the work and added a few contributions of his own.

Francis's 2015 encyclical on care for the planet is titled what?

Laudato si'. The timing was deliberate: months earlier he said it had to appear well before the Paris climate talks 'so that it can make a contribution'.

Francis's 2016 letter Amoris laetitia set off a dispute over communion for whom?

Divorced and remarried Catholics. He left the formal bar in place but suggested a priest might guide some back to communion, and four cardinals publicly asked him to clarify.

Francis's 2020 encyclical on social friendship, published during the COVID-19 pandemic, is called what?

Fratelli tutti. He argued that the handling of the pandemic had exposed a failure of countries to work together, and condemned what he called a 'throwaway culture'.

In 2018 Francis revised the Catechism to declare which practice "inadmissible" in all cases?

The death penalty. The Catechism used to allow it where it was the only way to defend lives against an aggressor; the new text calls it an attack on the dignity of the person.

For his Jubilee of Mercy in 2015–16, what did Francis have opened in cathedrals worldwide for the first time?

Holy Doors. He wanted the jubilee kept everywhere, not only in Rome, and opened the first door himself at the cathedral in Bangui, in the war-torn Central African Republic.

Francis's famous 2013 remark about gay priests, made to journalists on a plane, was what?

"Who am I to judge?" Ten years later he approved blessings for same-sex couples, on condition that they were kept out of church rites and liturgies.

Francis helped broker the 2014 deal to restore US diplomatic relations with which country?

Cuba. He wrote personally to Barack Obama and Raúl Castro urging them to settle the cases of their prisoners, and Obama thanked him by name when he announced the thaw.

In February 2019 Francis became the first pope to celebrate Mass where?

On the Arabian Peninsula. The Mass in Abu Dhabi drew a vast crowd, many of them migrant workers, and on the same trip he signed a joint declaration on peace between faiths with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar.

In March 2021 Francis made the first papal visit to which country, meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani?

Iraq. The two men urged Muslims and Christians to live side by side, and Francis went on to pray with other faith leaders at Ur, held to be the birthplace of Abraham.

In July 2022, Francis apologised in which country for the Church's role in residential schools?

Canada. He called the trip a 'penitential pilgrimage' and, near the site of a former school, begged forgiveness for the evil done by so many Christians to Indigenous peoples.

In 2024 Francis became the first pope to take part in a summit of which group of leading economies?

The G7. Speaking in Italy at a session on artificial intelligence, he urged leaders to ban weapons that pick their own targets, saying no machine should ever choose to take a human life.

Which Argentine football club did Francis support all his life?

San Lorenzo de Almagro. He kept up his club membership even as pope, and the players brought the Copa Libertadores to the Vatican to show him after winning it in 2014.

Which men's magazine named Francis its best-dressed man of 2013?

Esquire. Its editors pointed to his black shoes and unadorned robes, in the same month that Time made him its Person of the Year.

On which platform did Francis become the first pope with an account in 2016, gaining a million followers in 12 hours?

Instagram. His first post was a photo of him kneeling in prayer with 'pray for me' in nine languages, and he reached a million followers twice as fast as the previous record holder, David Beckham.

Francis's spiritual testament asked that he be buried in which Roman basilica?

Santa Maria Maggiore. He had gone there to pray before its ancient icon of Mary all through his papacy, beginning the morning after his election, and is the first pope buried there since 1669.

Francis died on Easter Monday 2025, one day after doing what?

Blessing the crowd at St Peter's. Against his doctors' advice to rest for two months, he appeared on the balcony of St Peter's and then went down into the square to greet the faithful.

Weeks after leaving hospital, where he had survived double pneumonia, Francis died of what?

A cerebral stroke. The Vatican's death certificate says it led to a coma and then to an irreversible collapse of his heart and circulation.

Who was elected as Francis's successor on 8 May 2025?

Leo XIV. Chicago-born Robert Prevost said he chose the name mainly after Leo XIII, who took up the cause of workers in the first industrial revolution, as artificial intelligence drives a new one.

Francis simplified papal funerals by ending which tradition?

Three nested coffins. He was buried in a single one of wood and zinc, and at his funeral the plain box sat in front of St Peter's before kings, presidents and 220 cardinals.

In April 2016 Francis visited the Moria refugee camp on which Greek island?

Lesbos. He flew home with twelve Syrian refugees on the papal plane, three Muslim families whose homes had been bombed, as guests of the Vatican.

A 2021 letter from Francis, reversing his predecessor, restricted the celebration of what?

The traditional Latin Mass. The letter, Traditionis custodes, undid a 2007 decision to free up the old rite and handed bishops back the power to permit or ban it in their dioceses.