Nearly every aspect of Pope Francis' life, from his career as a bouncer to his critiques of capitalism, has been picked apart by the press and a troop of talented biographers.īut as he prepares to make his maiden voyage to the United States, his time in Cordoba - a dramatic passage for one of world's most famous men - remains shrouded in mystery. It was a good day to officially begin my mission here. It's bigger than Dallas and twice the size of Boston.īy chance, my first day in Cordoba was July 31, the feast day of St. More than 1.3 million people call the city home. It may be 500 miles from Buenos Aires, but Cordoba is no Elba Island. Dodging downtown traffic, I thought: This is where the Pope was exiled? Fashionable shops and fancy restaurants crowded the narrow streets. My misconceptions about the city became clear by morning.Ĭars honked through rush hour. This is the story of why Jorge Mario Bergoglio was exiled to this room - and how the painful lessons he learned here are transforming the Catholic Church.Ĭordoba lay in darkness when I arrived late on a July night, save for the dim halo of high streetlamps. It was, he would later say, "a time of great interior crisis." He was 50 years old, forsaken by many fellow Jesuits, left to suffer in silence. It was a dark night for a man now known for his megawatt presence and huge flock of followers. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who would become Pope Francis, spent two years in this room during the 1990s. 5, all you hear is the insistent echo of your own thoughts, your lonely prayers to a faraway God.
Street vendors hawk homemade pipes.īut in Room No. Buskers try their hand at American blues. Outside this solitary space, on the other side of its thick stone walls, students flock and scatter like birds. 5 of the Jesuit residence in Cordoba, Argentina. It looks like a cell: a monk's or a prisoner's. A painting of the Crucifixion is the only adornment. Heavy red curtains, red-tiled floor, red coverlet on the bed. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre.
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