We have a pope! Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina has been selected as the new leader of the Catholic Church, the first pontiff from Latin America and the first from outside of Europe in over 1,000 years. ( In 1900, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics lived in Europe. Today only 20 percent do ) The 76-year-old will take the name Francis I. Shortly after being selected, Francis spoke from Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and asked Catholics to say a prayer for his predecessor. “I’d ask you to pray to God so that he can bless me,” Bergoglio told the cheering crowd. He delivered his first tweet from @pontifex, writing “HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM.” According to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the new pope’s first act will be to visit recently retired Pope Benedict tomorrow at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, Italy. Not too shabby for a first day.
Francis is known as a humble man who spoke out for the poor and led an austere life in Buenos Aires. He was born to Italian immigrant parents and was raised in the Argentine capital.
The new pope inherits a church wrestling with an array of challenges that intensified during his predecessor, Benedict XVI, including a shortage of priests, growing competition from evangelical churches in the Southern Hemisphere, a sexual abuse crisis that has undermined the church’s moral authority in the West and difficulties governing the Vatican itself.
Amid changing mores on sexuality, including same-sex marriage, Francis' traditional views have clashed with cultural changes in Argentina. Before the nation legalized same-sex marriage in 2010, Francis called it a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”
In a 2007 address at a large meeting of Latin American bishops, Francis emphasized that belief. "We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least," he said. "The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers."
At the same time, the new pope is expected to uphold church orthodoxy on sexuality, abortion, marriage and contraception. The same year he said same-sex marriage attacks God's plan, he also said gay people adopting children is an act of discrimination against children.
Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, an organization that tracks bishops' records on clergy abuse, had more pointed words about Francis.
"There is some evidence that Bergoglio is well aware that rebuilding the church will entail much more work on the abuse crisis than was done by Pope Benedict. For example, last year Bergoglio was outspoken regarding the case of accused (Argentine) priest Justo José Ilarraz," McKiernan said.
But while "Pope Francis’ meetings with survivors of sexual abuse will be less formal than Pope Benedict’s pioneering encounters," McKiernan said Francis "encountered many cases of sexual abuse in the years when he was an auxiliary bishop and then the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Yet he has been content for the most part to remain silent."