SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The man remembered today at a funeral in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis, was once very different. There was a period of time decades ago when he was viewed as arrogant, aloof, as someone who caused so much discord that he was essentially exiled from the Argentinian Jesuit order he had once led. Francis has referred to this two-year window, which happened when he was in his 50s, as a dark night and a crisis in his life.
NPR's religion editor Daniel Burke reported deeply on this period of time in then-Father Jorge Bergoglio's life. So for today's Reporter's Notebook, on the day of Pope Francis' funeral, we are talking to Daniel about what he learned about that period of exile in Cordoba and how he went about his reporting. Hi, Daniel.
DANIEL BURKE, BYLINE: Hello.
DETROW: OK, so let's set the stage here. This is early on, relatively - the first couple years of Francis' papacy. You are covering it for CNN. What was it about this period on his resume that drew you? Why did you think this is something I want to spend a lot of time and resources investigating?
BURKE: Shortly after he was elected pope in 2013, there were timelines of his life produced by the Catholic Church. And there was this gap, as you said, from 1990 to 1992, in which he was essentially doing nothing - a very menial job at a parish in the city of Cordoba, far from his home city. And I thought, well, that's interesting. He goes from being a really powerful Jesuit to doing nothing, and then he's a powerful archbishop. What is going on here? Why was he sent to this place? What did he do here? And so I went with kind of an open mind. The thing that I discovered that kept me going is the fact that he won't talk about it. And that's when I thought, oh, wow, there must be something really here that is still emotionally resonant for him.
DETROW: And he never did at any point in his papacy. He had that memoir come out, and he just glancingly referenced it in that.
BURKE: One line - he just calls it a dark night. And so, yeah, I was looking to that memoir to try to get some more insights to this period of his life because it's still somewhat of a mystery to me, to be honest. But he - even friends said he - it was, like, too painful for him to talk about. It was still, like, an open wound until the end of his life. He wrote that memoir when he was 87, right? So...
DETROW: Yeah. And it must have been hard to report, then, though, given that. You can't call him up and say, hey, tell me about this.
BURKE: Right. Exactly. I wrote him a letter, but he did not answer, of course, right? But his friends, who, again, said he didn't talk about it but still talked to him during this period and saw him - the story began to come together of what he was like at this time of his life, why he was sent away for this period - because he was creating division among the Jesuits. He had this view that priests should - he still said this as pope - should smell like their sheep, which means, like, be in touch with the people, with the flock.
In Argentina, he meant that literally. He wanted Jesuits to work on farms, to help feed poor people, to milk the cows, to harvest the crops. And there were Jesuits in Argentina who didn't want to do that at all. They were intellectual. They wanted to spend their time teaching. And so there was - it basically split into two camps, the Pope Francis camp and the other camp. And because of those divisions, he was sent away, 500 miles away from his birth city, Buenos Aires. And when he's there, as I said, he has no real job. He is supposed to kind of finish his doctoral dissertation but, like a lot of Ph.D. students, is not so interested...
DETROW: Yeah.
BURKE: ...In that. You know, inspiration's fire has dimmed a little bit. So he spends a lot of time praying, spends a lot of time reading, writing some essays. But he refers to it as a time of purification and as a dark night.
DETROW: Is it fair to say, based on the reporting you did, that the person who emerges from this period of time is different from the person who came into it?
BURKE: Without a doubt. The people closest to him - and I managed to get in touch with Jesuits who were as close to him as friends can be - say that this was a different guy. The Jesuits take a vow of obedience, right? And it's one thing - obedience, that vow, is one thing when you're on the top. When you're on the bottom and you're getting sent away from your community to this menial job, it's quite a different thing.
The man who emerged was not as authoritarian. He's much more consulting with other people. He's much more willing to listen to other people and to compromise. So they said they noticed a discernible change when he comes out of this. He is, in some ways, freer but also much more chill about living with other people and being in community with other people.
DETROW: How did learning all of this information and putting this story together and better understanding this period of time that, again, he never wanted to talk about - how did that help you better understand the papacy going forward, the person going forward that you were covering?
BURKE: Yeah, so he's got this amazing quote that I found that he told a politician who basically was voted out of office. And what he said to this politician is, you have to live your exile, and you will come back kinder and more merciful and be prepared to serve your people. And when I saw that quote, I thought, oh, that has the ring of real experience behind it, right? So he - it is clear, and was clear throughout his papacy, that he was fallible. He said that he had made mistakes. And I think he had a keen sense from this period of what it's like to be fallible, of what it's like to be seen as an outcast, someone who's not wanted by the church or the community. And so he had a heart for those kind of people.
If you see him talking to people on the margins, he's always welcoming them into the church. He had this evocative phrase, that he wanted it to be a field hospital and not a fortress. And so when I see him talk about mercy so much for all manner of sinners, it's hard for me not to think of this period in his life when he was cast out because of his perceived sins.
DETROW: I think what's also interesting - kind of veering away from the story in itself - is that you see a different person come out of this experience than who went into it. You also saw a different person emerge from the conclave than the cardinal who went into it, right? Like, I think it is fair to say that Pope Francis was very different in a lot of ways than Cardinal Bergoglio. And as we all prepare to see a new person step out on the balcony and immediately Google their life history...
BURKE: (Laughter).
DETROW: ...How much of an open mind do you think people should keep in terms of how different somebody can be when they're suddenly in a new position of power, like a papacy?
BURKE: That's a great question because you talk to people in Argentina who knew him, and even in Buenos Aires, after this period - right? - he was kind of known as a sourpuss. In the period of Cordoba that I wrote about, he - when he heard confessions, Catholics did not want to go to him.
DETROW: (Laughter).
BURKE: He was known as being strict. They called him Father Sourface (ph). So they actually avoided him. Imagine that, avoiding the future pope...
DETROW: Yeah.
BURKE: ...At just a parish in Argentina.
DETROW: Not that guy.
BURKE: Exactly. And then you see this pope emerge...
DETROW: Yeah.
BURKE: ...St. Peter's Basilica smiling, kissing babies, so happy. Even his sister said the office changed the man. He seems freer. He seems happier. He smiles more. So I think, you know, Catholics talk a lot about the Holy Spirit. And there's some Catholics who say, like, that his personality changes are only explainable in that kind of supernatural way, that he was so different when he became pope, so joyful. That was really a change.
DETROW: I'm wondering how you, as a person, were affected by this assignment and what, if any, lessons you drew out of it about how sometimes your life can take a wrong turn in terms of how you think it should go.
BURKE: Yeah. I think what's striking about this moment in the pope's life - he was in his 50s, right? And he was a rising star in the Jesuit order. And then he's sent down to this little parish and has to kind of reckon with that. Like, what is my life now? What does it mean to me? He kind of had his purpose taken away from him. And so, you know, I'm approaching that age, and I think about that a lot. I think a lot about both my own aspirations, but, like, the world doesn't care about my aspirations, right? Like, there's going to be something that happens regardless.
And I think it - what I learned from him and what I learned from this period is, so much is dependent on how you handle those situations, right? Like, he could have gone into this period and really just moped and left the Jesuit order or left the church and not really used it in the way he did, which was to make himself a better person at the end of the day. And I think there's some lessons in that for all of us, maybe.
DETROW: That is NPR religion editor Daniel Burke. Thank you so much.
BURKE: Thank you, Scott.
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