Pope Francis is now 78 years old. He was born the eldest son in a family of five from Italian immigrants from Piedmont in 1933 in Flores, Buenos Aires.

Having briefly had a girlfriend and helplessly dreamed of one during his Jesuit studies, he became a provincial of the Jesuit province of Argentina at the young age of 36.

He was then a conservative authoritarian, even under Argentina’s brutal Junta government of the 1970s, where he forbade older Jesuits Yorio and Jalics to work in the slums, given the extreme danger there to their lives. They disobeyed and suffered the consequences.

Meanwhile, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s actions had split the Jesuit province into two opposing camps. He was exiled to Cordoba, 500 kilometres away, for two years of prayer and reflection, then to Frankfurt, Augsburg and Hamburg, in Germany.

In Augsburg, in Bavaria he was introduced to the historic image of Our Lady who unties knots, which he reproduced and then took to Argentina, where it is widely venerated.

Bergoglio softened his position towards Liberation Theology in favour of the poor. This amounted to a conversion.

Then he was appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires and, ultimately, the Pope made him a cardinal of the Catholic Church.

As Pope Francis for the past two years, we are seeing the fruits of his faith and conversion, his incessant action in different fields, his vision of a more authentic Church and his hopes for the future.

Let us hope he will be among us as Pope for many years to come. His witness is both vital and meaningful, serving to move people as well as nations.