Pope Francis Pope Francis Pope Francis (; ; ; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio; 17 December 1936) is the Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina's provincial superior of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998
Jorge Mario García Laguardia Jorge Mario García Laguardia Dr Jorge Mario García Laguardia is a Guatemalan jurist. He has been a tenured lecturer at several Guatemalan and foreign universities, including the Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala City, where he founded the School of Political Science, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and he has served the Guatemalan state in several juridical capacities. García Laguardia's academic work has focussed on three main areas: the history of public law, Latin American integration (particularly that of Central America), and constitutional law. He spent a number of years in exile during Guatemala's Civil War, lecturing and