Olive oil *

Jorge Bergoglio, priest from Argentina known for humble gestures (born 1936), now leader of the Catholic Church as “Pope Francis”, with a following of 1.4bn. Born into a traditional Italian family in Buenos Aires, his grandma, Nonna Rossa, taught him the legends of Catholicism, like oxen pulling a cart with a statue of Mary, refusing to leave Luján in Argentina, where there is now a basilica, dismissed by intellectuals as superstitious, peasant religion. He joined the disciplined Jesuit arm of the Church, immediately promoted to senior positions, and clashed with two of his former teachers who were living and preaching in slums as the military cracked down on communism. When they disappeared, after authoritarian warnings from Bergoglio that the Jesuits could not protect them, he was accused of collusion, dismissed to Córdoba and banned from saying Mass in public. No longer chauffeured by fellow priests, Bergoglio became even more solitary, reflective and devoted to the pure faith of the poor, buying bus tickets, or booking his own flights, organising processions through the poorest districts when he was recalled to Buenos Aires by its archbishop. Bergoglio’s great depths of compassion and Christianity had overcome his instinctive conservatism, positioning him as a counter to the lofty German, Pope Benedict XVI, tilting the Vatican to social justice. The only purpose of the Church is to tell the good news of Christ, Bergoglio told a conclave of cardinals before his own election, like a “comforting mother who offers the joy of Jesus to the world.” He prayed the rosary as the vote was counted, overcome with calm, “almost to the point of not being aware of myself,” the new Pope told Mexican TV. “They made me stand up... I forget. I was at peace.” He has washed the feet of prisoners in Rome, building laundries for the homeless, emphasising forgiveness over high-minded theology, whilst throwing casual remarks that challenge the self-certainties of the clergy, replacing their affectations of rococo, Latin and lace with more conference-like “synods”, a talking shop for bishops, and a “college of cardinals”, increasingly appointed from outside Europe. More than just a name, “Francis” is his plan to rebuild the Church, both loving and protective, emotionally and psychologically close to its people, centred on the Gospel. Oppressing the poor and defrauding workers are sins that “cry out to God for vengeance.”

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René Brülhart, Swiss lawyer (born 1972) who led an investigatory unit in Liechtenstein, uncovering bribes paid by engineering group Siemens and cash hidden by dictator Saddam Hussein. When the Vatican seemed slow to clamp down on foreign ambassadors transferring large sums through the Vatican Bank, Deutsche Bank disconnected its cash machines and Brülhart setup an office underneath the papal apartment with 25 American lawyers working through 19,000 accounts, checking photocopied passports against records written in Latin. Before their review concluded, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Pope Benedict XVI and King Albert II of Belgium had all stepped down within six months and his own office was eventually raided, moving on in 2019.

Víctor Manuel Fernández, Pope Francis' speech writer from Argentina, or “theological collaborator” (born 1962), who articulates and helps shape the Pope’s world view. The son of a shopkeeper, Fernández’s appointment as rector to a university in Buenos Aires was blocked for two years by the Vatican’s staid bureaucracy, which held a file questioning his theology and a paper he wrote on “the art of kissing”, a theological analysis of intimacy, but Pope Francis made Fernández cardinal, drafting his defining text, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel): “The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters... The Church cannot and must not remain on the side-lines in the fight for justice.” The Vatican bureaucracy is not essential, Fernandez now says: the Pope could have an office in Bogotá “and perhaps link-up by teleconference” with liturgical experts in Germany.

Visvaldas Kulbokas, Vatican ambassador in Kyiv (born 1974), Lithuanian archbishop and the Pope’s translator in meetings with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Most countries shut their embassies in war-torn Ukraine, but Kulbokas has been sleeping in corridors, always carrying his papers and an emergency phone, constantly braced for an airstrike. “This missile was different,” said one nun near the border, listening to the vibrations of an X101 flying over. Being in Ukraine is a grace from God, Kulbokas says, but also a “continuous trauma, every second.”