Article updated: 3/15/2013 9:52 AM

Argentines celebrate Francis as their ‘slum pope’

Article
Photos (3)

Buy this photo Buy this photo

next prev 1 of 3

Volunteer Constanza Lascumbres, top right, teaches reading to Nicole Farias, 9, at the Virgin of Caacupe church in a shantytown in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At Villa 21-24, a slum so dangerous that most outsiders wouldn't dare go in, Jorge Mario Bergoglio often showed up unannounced over the course of more than 20 years. For many at the slum's Caacupe Virgin of the Miracles Church, it's nothing short of a miracle that the same man is now the pope.

Associated Press

In this 2000 photo, Argentina's Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, left, gives a mass in honor of slain Priest Carlos Mugica, the day his remains were taken to the Villa 31 slum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mugica was born in Buenos Aires in 1930 and worked with the needy. Every significant slum in Buenos Aires has a church, thanks in part to Bergoglio.

Associated Press file photo/2000

A woman prays inside the Virgin of Caacupe Church in the Villa 21-24 shantytown in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Residents here proudly recall how the Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio would walk in arrive on a bus and walk through the mud to reach the young members of the slum's church. How he sponsored marathons and carpentry classes, consoled single mothers, blessed the local chapel and washed the feet of recovering drug addicts. How he became one of them.

Associated Press

About this Article

For more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide, he's Pope Francis. For Argentina's poorest citizens, crowded in "misery villages" throughout the capital, he's proudly known as one of their own, a true "slum pope." Villa 21-24 is a slum so dangerous that most outsiders don't dare enter, but residents say Jorge Mario Bergoglio often showed up unannounced to share laughs and sips of mate, the traditional Argentine herbal tea shared by groups using a common straw.