Pope Francis Trivia
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50 free Pope Francis trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio worked as a bouncer and a lab technician, lost part of a lung at 21, and was a Jesuit provincial before he turned 40. In 2013 the cardinals made him the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit and the first Francis, and he began by saying "Buonasera" from the balcony and riding the minibus back to the guesthouse with everyone else. Twelve years later he became the first pope in more than 350 years to be buried at Santa Maria Maggiore. This Pope Francis trivia quiz runs 50 questions across his life and papacy: Flores and his Piedmontese father, the Salesian school and the chemistry diploma, the Jesuit novitiate and Ireland, the slums of Buenos Aires, the 2005 and 2013 conclaves, why he chose the name Francis, the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the foot-washing at Casal del Marmo, Lumen fidei and Laudato si', the Year of Mercy, the death penalty catechism change, Cuba and Abu Dhabi and Ur, the Canada apology, San Lorenzo, Time and Rolling Stone, Instagram, his final Easter and the election of Leo XIV. Easy questions come first; the last third is for people who know their Evangelii gaudium from their Fratelli tutti. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's biography of Francis, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question. Fans of this quiz should also try our Vatican and world religions quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 2015, Francis became the first pope to address which body?
The US Congress
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.
Q 02Jonathan Pryce earned an Oscar nomination for playing Francis in which 2019 film?
The Two Popes
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.
Q 03Francis was the first pope from which religious order?
The Jesuits
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.
Q 04After his election in 2013, how did Francis travel back to his lodgings?
On a bus with the cardinals
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.
Q 05Francis told journalists in 2013 that he chose his papal name in honour of which saint?
Francis of Assisi
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.
Q 06Francis's first trip abroad as pope took him to World Youth Day in which city?
Rio de Janeiro
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.
Q 07Which of these figures did Francis declare a saint in 2016?
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa. The Vatican had granted a special dispensation to speed up her cause, which opened within two years of her death in 1997.
Q 08Bergoglio's father emigrated from which north-western Italian region?
Piedmont
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.
Q 09Before entering the seminary, Bergoglio earned a secondary-school diploma qualifying him as what?
A chemical technician
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.
Q 10Which of these jobs did the young Bergoglio hold before the priesthood?
Nightclub bouncer
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.
Q 11At 21, after a life-threatening illness, Bergoglio had part of which organ removed?
A lung
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.
Q 12As a novice, Bergoglio studied the humanities in a city called Santiago, in which country?
Chile
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.
Q 13As a teenager, Bergoglio felt called to the priesthood after stopping at a church for what?
Confession
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.
Q 21At the 2005 conclave, Bergoglio reportedly begged cardinals to do what?
Stop voting for him
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.
Q 22In 2016 Francis held the first-ever meeting between a pope and the head of which church?
The Russian Orthodox 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.
Q 23Which Italian greeting did Francis use in his first words from the balcony of St Peter's in 2013?
Q 14Bergoglio's 1973 pilgrimage to Jerusalem was cut short by the outbreak of which war?
The Yom Kippur 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.
Q 15Bergoglio spent the first three months of 1980 in which country, learning English?
Ireland
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.
Q 16On his first trip outside Rome as pope, in July 2013, Francis met migrants on which island?
Lampedusa
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.
Q 17Francis's motto, 'by having mercy and by choosing', comes from a homily on Jesus calling which tax collector?
Matthew
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.
Q 18Francis asked Argentines planning to fly to Rome for his 2013 inauguration to do what instead?
Give the fare to the poor
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'.
Q 19As archbishop, Bergoglio doubled the number of priests working in which part of Buenos Aires?
Its slums
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.
Q 20Which pope made Bergoglio a cardinal in 2001?
John Paul II
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.
Buonasera
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.
Q 24On his first balcony appearance, Francis declined which traditional garment?
The red ermine-trimmed mozzetta
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.
Q 25Instead of the papal apartments, Francis chose to live where?
The Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse
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.
Q 26Bergoglio told a fellow cardinal that, if elected in 2005, he would have taken which papal name?
John XXIV
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.
Q 27In 2016 Francis said a person who thinks only of building what 'is not Christian'?
Walls
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.
Q 28On his first Holy Thursday as pope, where did Francis wash feet instead of a basilica?
A youth prison
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.
Q 29Francis's first encyclical, Lumen fidei, was largely written by whom?
Benedict XVI
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.
Q 30Francis's 2015 encyclical on care for the planet is titled what?
Laudato si'
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'.