Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was ordained a priest in 1969, became archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, and was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2001. Bergoglio was elected the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church by the College of Cardinals on March 13, 2013, when he took the name Francis for St. Francis of Assisi. He is the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Americas, and the first non-European pope in more than twelve centuries.