Pope Francis marked 10 years as head of the Roman Catholic Church on Monday celebrating Mass with cardinals in the chapel of the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel where he has lived since his election.
Argentine-born Francis, 86, became the first Latin American pope on March 13, 2013, succeeding Benedict XVI who became the first pope in six centuries to resign.
“It seems like yesterday,” he said in a podcast by Vatican News on Monday. “Time flies. If you gather today, it will be tomorrow.”
While being recorded at his home on Sunday, he asked: “What’s a podcast?” according to Vatican News reporter Salvatore Cernuzio. When it was explained to people, he said “Good. Let’s do it”.
Former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has sought to project simplicity into his great role and never had the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors, saying he preferred to live in a community environment for “psychological health”.
He has invited all the cardinals who are in Rome with him to Monday’s Mass.
A persistent knee ailment has forced Francis to alternate between a cane and a wheelchair but appears healthy overall.
“You don’t open the Church with your knees but with your head,” he told an aide after he began occasionally using his wheelchair in public for the first time last May.
CARDINAL ELECTORS
Francis said he would be ready to step down if serious health problems prevented him from running the 1.38 billion Church. But he also said he thought popes should try to rule for life and that being pope emeritus – like Benedict – should not be “fashionable”. Benedict resigned for health reasons but lived for almost 10 more years.
With 10 years as pope, Francis has now reigned longer than the average of 7.5 years of the previous 265 pontificates. He has visited 60 countries and territories, covering nearly 410,000 km (255,000 miles).
But he hasn’t returned to his native Argentina, nothing that has fueled much speculation.
He has named about 64% of the so-called cardinal electors who are under the age of 80 and thus eligible to enter a conclave to elect his successor after his death or resignation.
Francis marked the anniversary of his overcoming the conservative opposition in the Church, which has repeatedly demanded his resignation and is now at a crossroads, looking for a new direction after the death of two key figures.
The longest believed papacy is St. The apostle Peter, the first pope, was about 35 years old.
The longest pontificate in recent centuries was Pius IX, who reigned for more than 31 years between 1846 and 1878. After that, the pontificate of John Paul II, who reigned for more than 26 years between 1978 and 2005.
The shortest is believed to be Urban VII, which lasted 13 days in 1590.
Source: Reuters
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