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Pope Francis ( Latin : Franciscus ; Italian : Francesco ; Spanish : Francisco ; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio [b] on 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church , the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State . Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere , and the first pope from outside Europe since the 8th century papacy of Syrian pope Gregory III .
Born in Buenos Aires , Argentina , Bergoglio worked for a time as a bouncer and a janitor as a young man before training to be a chemist and working as a technician in a food science laboratory. After recovering from a severe illness of pneumonia and cysts, he was inspired to join the Jesuits in 1958. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope Joh