Pope Francis traveled around the world during his 12-year papacy, stopping in 68 countries with 47 Apostolic Visits but never returned to his native Argentina.
Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires who died Monday at the age of 88, didn’t make the return to his motherland despite signaling early on his desires.
The 266th pontiff, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the Flores neighborhood of the Argentinian capital, never publicly spoke about his failure to return to the South American country.
Francis had an open invitation to visit Argentina from all four presidents who served during his papacy since 2013, along with the Argentine Episcopal Conference.
Fears of causing larger political and economic rifts in the country were reportedly a significant factor in why Francis chose not to return to Argentina as he didn’t want to be a divisive figure back home.
“It’s sad, because we should have been proud to have an Argentine pope,” Francis’ childhood neighbor Ardina Aragon told The Associated Press. “I think there were political factors that influenced him.”
When he left for the Vatican in March 2013 to take part in the conclave after Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation, Francis believed he would return shortly, telling parishioners, “see you soon.”
Francis, a Jesuit, clashed with the Argentinian political class dating back to when he was an archbishop.
He criticized the “autocratic tendencies” of the country’s political class, a dig that then President Néstor Kirchner and his wife, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner did not take kindly.
Francis at the time supported the Catholic Church’s stance on same sex marriage, which caused furor with Fernandez de Kirchner who legalized it in 2010.
Francis also didn’t see eye-to-eye with Argentina’s current President, Javier Milei, after the former TV personality called the pope an “imbecile” and “the representative of the Evil One on Earth” before taking office.
Milei also slammed the pope for promoting social justice, supporting taxes and sympathizing with “murderous communists.”
In 2024, the two embraced inside the Vatican before the canonization mass of Argentina’s first female saint, María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa in what was characterized as a “cordial meeting.”
Francis’s attempt to separate himself from Argentina may have caused his favorability to drop among his countrymen.
In a common trend among several Latin American countries and the US, Francis’ popularity dropped throughout his term in Vatican City, but saw the largest decrease in his home country.
A Pew Research poll found 91 percent of Argentinians held a favorable opinion of him when he was first elected to the papacy in 2013.
In September 2024, the figure fell to 64 percent.
Thirty percent of adults had unfavorable opinions towards Francis, a steep rise from the three percent in 2013.
Although he never visited Argentina, Francis returned to South America when he visited Brazil in the first months of his papacy during his first overseas trip in July 2013.
He visited four of the five nations that border Argentina – Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay.
Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva, Francis’ successor at his former diocese, said his parishioners became “orphans of a father who profoundly loved his country and had to learn to become the father of the whole world.”
He added that “Francis becoming Pope “cost us as Argentines a little bit… Bergoglio left us to become Francis.”
