Modern Religious Figures

Explanation: Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. He became the first Latin American pope and the first Jesuit to hold the role. He chose the name Francis in tribute to Francis of Assisi, a signal of a pontificate focused on poverty and ecology.

Explanation: Benedict XVI resigned on February 28, 2013, citing his age and declining strength. No pope had abdicated since Gregory XII in 1415. He then lived for almost ten years at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican, under the unprecedented title of "pope emeritus", until his death in December 2022.

Explanation: Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her work with the poorest in Calcutta. She refused the official banquet and asked that the planned amount be redirected to the poor of India. She was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016.

Explanation: Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje (then Ottoman Empire, now North Macedonia), she was of Albanian origin. Her order now counts over 5,000 sisters present in more than 130 countries.

Explanation: The speech was delivered on August 28, 1963 before 250,000 people at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. A Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King tirelessly combined religious commitment and the civil rights struggle. He would be assassinated five years later in Memphis, at age 39.

Explanation: Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama. Born in 1935 in a peasant family in Amdo, he was recognized as a child as the reincarnation of the previous one. Exiled in India since 1959 after the Tibetan uprising, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his nonviolent struggle.

Explanation: Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu was a major voice against apartheid. After the regime fell, Nelson Mandela entrusted him in 1995 with chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a groundbreaking body that favored public confession over criminal trial.

Explanation: Ahimsa literally means "non-harming". Present in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, this ancient principle forbids harming any living being. Gandhi gave it a radical political scope by applying it to the struggle against the British Empire, through civil disobedience and fasting.

Explanation: Khomeini returned to Tehran on February 1, 1979 after fifteen years in exile, the last years of which were spent in France in Neauphle-le-Château. The Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed two months later. It is the first Shiite theocratic regime of modern history and it has lasted since.

Explanation: Aung San Suu Kyi spent nearly fifteen years under house arrest in Burma (officially Myanmar since 1989). Her international aura suffered after 2017 and her silence on the repression of the Muslim Rohingya minority, which cost her several honorary distinctions in the West.