Pope Francis marks 10 years as head of the Roman Catholic Church on Monday, celebrating a Mass with cardinals at the Vatican’s Santa Marta chapel, where he has lived since his election.
Francis, 86, born in Argentina, became history’s first Latin American pontiff on March 13, 2013, succeeding Benedict XVI, the first pope in six centuries to resign.
“It feels like yesterday,” he said in a Vatican News podcast broadcast on Monday. “The time flies.”
When it was taped at his residence on Sunday, he asked, “What is a podcast?” according to Vatican News reporter Salvatore Cernuzio. When it was explained he said “Cool. Let’s go”.
Former cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio sought to project simplicity into the grand function and never took over the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, saying he preferred to live in a communal setting for his “psychological health”.
He invited all the cardinals who are in Rome with him to Mass on Monday.
A persistent knee ailment has forced Francisco to alternate between a cane and a wheelchair, but he appears to be in generally good health.
You don’t run the Church with a knee, but with your head,” he reportedly told an aide after he began occasionally using a wheelchair in public for the first time last May.
Francis has said he would be ready to step down if serious health problems prevented him from managing the 1.38 billion-member church. But he also said he thought popes should try to stay in office for life and that being pope emeritus – as Benedict was – should not become a “fashion”.
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