Ash

Slept in the big room. I am touched to see that Ash spent the entire night and morning lying on my dirty socks, as though the smell of me gives her a sense of security. Kind of dog-like.

The 266 Vicar Of Jesus Christ (Part 5)

Mr. Binelli relates Pope Francis childhood history, including his conversion experience and his rise through the Jesuit ranks.

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Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, but his parents were Italian; his father fled Italy when Mussolini came to power. The family settled in Flores, a leafy, solidly middle-class neighborhood. There were many Italian relatives around, including a great-uncle whom Bergoglio described in a 2010 book of interviews as a "rascally old man" who "taught us to sing some rather risqué ditties in Genoese dialect. That explains why the only things I can say in Genoese do not bear repeating."

Buenos Aires was a cosmopolitan city, where vestiges of Spanish colonialism blended with an aspirational embrace of European culture. (There's an old joke about Argentines being Spanish-speaking Italians who think they're British.)

Bergoglio studied chemistry at a technical school, worked in a laboratory, moonlighted as a bouncer at a Buenos Aires bar, loved soccer and dancing the tango. Then, at 17, while meeting some friends, he walked past a church and had an epiphany. In an interview with a Buenos Aires radio station, Bergoglio described feeling "like somebody grabbed me from inside and took me to the confessional. . . . While I was there I felt that I had to become a priest, and I didn't doubt it."

Bergoglio didn't tell anyone about this incident for the next four years, while he continued to work and go to school, but in 1958, at age 21, he entered a Jesuit seminary. His mother was unhappy with his decision, and for years refused to visit him. "My mother experienced it as a plundering," Bergoglio recalled. "'I don't know, I don't see you as . . . you should wait a bit. . . . You're the eldest. . . . Keep working. . . . Finish university,' she said. The truth is, my mother was extremely upset." Bergoglio later said he was drawn to the Jesuits because of their emphasis on obedience and discipline, and also because he hoped to work as a missionary in Japan, where the Jesuits had been the first to introduce Christianity in the 1540s, though health problems – he'd lost part of a lung after a bout with pneumonia – prevented him from such travel. Instead, he taught literature at a Jesuit school, bringing in the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges for a lecture and, eventually, at the age of 36, found himself appointed provincial superior of the Jesuits in Argentina, which meant he oversaw the activities of the religious order throughout the country. "That was crazy," the pope acknowledged in his interview in America. "I had to deal with difficult situations, and I made my decisions abruptly and by myself." According to Paul Vallely's biography Pope Francis, Untying the Knots, Bergoglio was a divisive figure, seen by some Argentine Jesuits, ironically enough, as a conservative throwback clinging to pre-Vatican II tradition. Bergoglio used the word "authoritarianism" to describe his leadership style back then, admitting, "I did not always do the necessary consultation. . . . My style of government as a Jesuit at the beginning had many faults."

-- Mark Binelli at Rolling Stone

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Getting Clothes

Pop took me out to get some sweatpants and any other basic items of clothing that I needed. The stores do not seem to offer up sweatsuits in the summer, which is when we usually do my clothes shopping, and it was understood that we would make a special trip in the winter. Today was that day. Pop noted that we can go out with a peaceful mind, knowing that Kay is here to keep watch over the house.

I was hoping that he was going to treat me to lunch. I was thinking of Furr’s and eating so much that I again find myself on the verge of feeling sick. He does get me something, but it is to pick up some McDonald’s on the way home. McDonald’s actually maintains a little outlet in this Walmart. I ate it in the car on the way home, getting ketchup on my clothes and all over my hands. It has been perhaps a good ten years since I have eaten McDonald’s food, but I am pretty sure that the quarter-pounder has gotten rather smaller, though it is a good sandwich. All in all, it was kind of a letdown. I even need the legs on the sweatpants to be fixed. At least Pop did not wear his cowboy hat.