Pope Francis: Here are the key dates in the late pontiff’s life – National

Key events in the life of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis and died on Monday:

Dec. 17, 1936: Jorge Mario Bergoglio is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the eldest of five children to Mario Jose Bergoglio, an accountant from Italy, and Regina María Sívori, the daughter of Italian immigrants.

Dec. 13, 1969: Ordained a priest with the Jesuit religious order, which he would lead as Argentina provincial superior during the country’s murderous dictatorship that began in the 1970s.

May 20, 1992: Named auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires and in 1998 succeeds Cardinal Antonio Quarracino as archbishop of the Argentine capital.

Feb. 21, 2001: Elevated to cardinal by St. John Paul II.

May 2007: Helps draft the final document of the fifth meeting of the Latin American bishops conference in Aparecida, Brazil, synthesizing what would eventually become his concerns as pope for the poor, Indigenous peoples and the environment and the need for a missionary church.

March 13, 2013: Elected 266th pope, the first from the Americas, the first Jesuit and the first to take the name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi.

April 13, 2013: Creates a kitchen cabinet of eight cardinals from around the globe to help him govern the church and reorganize its bureaucracy.

May 12, 2013: Canonizes the “Martyrs of Otranto,” 813 Italians slain in 1480 for defying demands by Turkish invaders to convert to Islam. With one ceremony, Francis nearly doubled the 480 saints made by St. John Paul II over his quarter-century pontificate, which at the time was more than all his predecessors combined for 500 years.