Francis: The People's Pope

Easter Sunday, Pope Francis at the Vatican...

Buona Pasqua.

...after months of illness,

those final images of the People's Pope

-in his final hours. -

Tonight, a world in mourning...

- -...but also in memory...

...of the legacy he left behind.

Pope Francis seemed to be changing the Church,

bringing it into the modern world

in a way that no pope had before.

This is a pope who wanted to build bridges,

not to build walls.

He not only preached in word, he preached in deed.

He's doing what Jesus asked him to do.

He's feeding the hungry, clothing the naked,

sheltering the homeless.

The humility, the modesty, the accessibility

of this man named Pope Francis.

Muchas gracias, Santo Padre.

And reaching out...

I was bullied... ...because of how I looked like.

...one by one.

And then I heard a voice, "This is Pope Francis."

He liked to push the line on some things,

and not every Catholic was comfortable with that.

His most famous line when he was asked

about gay priests,

"As long as they have a good heart

and are searching for God, who am I to judge?"

The papacy of Pope Francis in one word,

and that word is "mercy."

Mercy, mercy, mercy.

Francis: The People's Pope.

The story of Pope Francis

is the story of a man who heard the call

of service to God.

He is the pontiff, the bridge

between God and humanity in the belief of Catholics.

There is no other office in the world

like the papacy.

You can feel now a palpable tension here

as they realize any vote now could bring a pope.

Breaking news, we are looking at the smoke billowing

out of the cast iron chimney above the Sistine Chapel.

And there are the bells that confirm.

There is a pope, a new pope.

It's a sacred moment in the history of the Church

for a billion Catholics around the world

-and for the world at large. -

They introduce in Latin

the name of the pope.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

It was a total surprise

when they said Bergoglio, and I remember every... "Who?"

From Argentina, Bergoglio.

The first Jesuit pope.

First pope from Latin America.

This is something I'm not sure any of us expected.

I was screaming at the TV set.

I said, "It's Mario! It's Jorge! He's my teacher!"

I mean, I was just jumping with joy.

It was exhilarating. It was amazing.

You knew in the first 30 seconds

that the pontificate would be different

from the moment he walked out onto that balcony.

He was not wrapped in furs.

He did not have red velvet on. He did not have red shoes on.

And he steps to the microphone, and he finally said,

- - "Buona sera."

- Good evening. -It was like he met somebody

on the streets in Rome,

an old friend. "Buona sera."

The people in St. Peter's Square went crazy.

He's the first pope who didn't come from Europe

in a thousand years.

He's the first pope from the Western Hemisphere.

And then, of course, that massive thing

of turning the tables

and inviting the people to bless him.

The people prayed over their pope.

-This was unheard of. -

Archbishop Gregory, as we watch this scene,

I hope it's all right to tell everyone at home

of the tears standing in your eyes.

It is.

What touched me was his humility,

the humble request for prayers.

I thought, "He gets it."

I knew immediately what kind of pope he would be.

He chose the name of Francis,

one of the greatest

of the saints of the Catholic Church, right?

Saint Francis of Assisi.

Francis was the saint of the poor, and this was, uh,

like flinging down a gauntlet.

What became obvious immediately

after Pope Francis was elected

was that he was gonna change the style of being pope.

Instead of going in the papal limousine,

he got back on the bus with all the other cardinals.

And then the next day,

he goes to the place where he was staying

and pays his bill.

In the early days, one of the most shocking things

was his decision not to live in the papal palace.

He decided to live in the Casa Santa Marta,

in the Vatican guesthouse,

that kind of Motel 6 on the Vatican grounds,

rather than in the Apostolic Palace.

There were people who criticized that.

They saw that as demeaning of the papacy.

"What, you're gonna live in a guesthouse?"

"What are we communicating here?"

I'd kind of gone,

you know, struggled a little with my Catholicism.

So, I was more excited as each day passed by

to learn more about his life

and about what he had gone through.

When I went to Buenos Aires,

I took these pictures.

So, this picture is his childhood home.

It's pretty nondescript.

Pope Francis grew up in Buenos Aires.

His grandparents were immigrants from Italy.

Francis would go to his grandma every day.

She taught him to pray. She taught him the rosary.

And his faith is very much rooted

in that kind of peasant folk religion

that Grandma Rosa brought with her.

As a young man, he danced the tango, he dated,

he loved the life of a normal kid in Argentina.

He got a job in a chemistry laboratory.

And he was on his way to see his girlfriend,

and he went to church just to say confession.

The conversation in the confessional

made something chime in his head.

And that changed his life. He knew from that moment

that he would give his life to God.

God works in mysterious ways,

including in a little confessional

in the middle of Buenos Aires. It's beautiful.

When he first became a priest, Pope Francis was a teacher.

-He taught high school. -He was an amazing teacher.

What immediately attracted me to him

was that simplicity, that making fun of himself.

We used to call him "carucha." Carucha means "funny face,"

because he had this funny face.

He was promoted very quickly

up through the ranks,

and he became the leader of the Jesuits

in all of Argentina at a very young age.

He wasn't experienced. He hadn't matured.

And so he approached the job

with a very authoritarian perspective

-and attitude. -

And that was the time when Argentina was in crisis.

There was a military coup,

and they set about

dealing with anybody who disagreed with them.

Some of my teachers did disappear.

Some of my friends, lots of them disappeared.

It was felt by some members of the Jesuit order

that he had not protected two Jesuits sufficiently,

who were picked up by the military and tortured.

What he always said was,

"I did everything I could to orchestrate their release."

While he was the head of the Jesuit order

in Argentina, and for years afterward,

he was viewed by some people there

as authoritarian, even divisive.

He became a target of anger and resentment

by leaders in his own Society of Jesus,

in the Jesuits, and his own church.

He essentially gets banished to Córdoba,

and he hears confessions there for a couple years.

He doesn't really have a job.

That exile became a kind of metamorphosis,

a time for him to go inside himself

and rethink everything and find a certain humility.

This is his bedroom in Córdoba where he was exiled.

There was a place to kneel and a bureau

and a picture of his mom in the room.

Those two years in Córdoba

changed him completely.

The archbishop in...

Buenos Aires had heard that he was...

he was not in circulation and thought,

"This is a waste. He'd make a great junior bishop for me."