Upon Watching “Call Me Francesco”

He too wavered, then—

That thought struck me with quiet force.

Pope Francis, in my mind, had always stood tall and distant, almost like a statue of prayer — unmoved, unwavering.

But here, in this film, he is young. A man with doubts. A man who, perhaps, once had someone he loved.

And he hesitates before the priesthood.

It reminded me that even the saints we venerate walked through the same dark woods of indecision we often find ourselves in.

There is a moment when other priests refuse to baptize the infant son of a single mother — yet he alone offers the sacrament.

And his eyes, then, are not merely kind.

There is something deeper — the quiet authority of grace.

A commitment to a God who does not measure by merit, but gives freely.

To see a man who would become pope bend down and bless a child the Church itself hesitated to embrace —

that, to me, was the Gospel incarnate.

The film does not shy away from pain.

The torture scenes during Argentina’s military dictatorship were almost unbearable.

I found myself tracing the sign of the cross more than once.

Some Jesuits hid students and activists, risking their lives. Others… chose collaboration with the regime.

Even within the Church, light and shadow coexisted.

And faith — that most sacred of things — could be twisted by fear, by ambition, by human frailty.

Then comes the scene in the slums.

The residents are to be evicted. The state wants the land. The local archbishop refuses to act.

But Bergoglio persuades him. He walks into that forsaken place. He says Mass.

The police, prepared for confrontation, are struck silent.

And in the end, not violence, not political power, but prayer itself protects the people’s homes.

The presence of God among cardboard and tin roofs — it humbled even the armed men.

There is also a telling moment — a secretary to the archbishop calls Bergoglio a “red.”

And it lingers in the air.

Because this film does not ignore the tension around liberation theology.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI both viewed it as dangerously close to heresy.

And I too am troubled by priests who take up arms — though that is not shown here.

But to stand with the poor, the voiceless, the marginalized — is that not the very heart of Christ?

There is a scene I cannot forget.

Two priests, once expelled from the order, are released from prison. A nun offers them shelter.

When Bergoglio arrives and requests to meet them, she refuses.

"You cast them out," she says.

Then — something jarring:

Bergoglio, for a moment, lashes out. “How dare you, Sister,” he says. “You forget your place.”

A threat, almost. Sharp and unbecoming.

And in that instant, we see it: his own fallibility.

He realizes it at once — the weight of his own words. Whether this moment happened in real life, I do not know.

But it felt true.

For even Peter denied. Even saints stumbled.

And perhaps holiness lies not in never falling, but in always rising again — slower, humbler.

One more scene remains with me.

Bergoglio warns a priest serving in the slums: the military is watching him. He is in danger.

And the priest replies simply:

“What would Jesus have done?”

That question — whispered in dim kitchens, muttered in slums, asked in silence —

is one we all must live with.

Not just priests, not just popes, but all of us who dare to believe.

What would Jesus have done?

Perhaps, in the life of Jorge Bergoglio — the boy, the priest, the flawed man — we glimpse one attempt to answer.