Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936, in a suburb of Buenos Aires, the son of a struggling accountant. The signs of strain that can be detected in his family are not merely economic. The adult Jorge was not given to speaking of his parents. After the birth of her fifth child, his mother became temporarily an invalid and had to delegate the upbringing of her children to a woman called Concepción. Jorge celebrated this surrogate as a good woman, yet he admitted that he treated her badly when, years later, she came to him to ask for his help as bishop in Buenos Aires and he sent her away, in his own words, “quickly and in a very bad way.”¹ The incident seems to point to strains which are buried in the past but may provide a clue to Bergoglio’s enigmatic personality.