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New Pope Selected: First from Jesuits and the Americas, Known for Modesty & Focus on the Poor

Posted byHoumanitarian
Pope Francis makes first papal appearance
Pope Francis makes first appearance

Anthony Faiola, Washington Post
VATICAN CITY — The man who will move into the 10-room papal residence inside the vaulted gates of the Holy See lives in a simple, austere apartment across from the Cathedral of Buenos Aires. In a city with a taste for luxury and status, he frequently prepares his own meals and abandoned the limousine of his high office to hop on “el micro” — Argentine slang for the bus.

A staunch conservative and devout Jesuit in Latin America’s most socially progressive nation, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is an almost Solomonesque choice by the princes of the church.

The 76-year-old hails from a country and a continent where the once powerful voice of the church is increasingly falling flat, losing ground — as it is in Europe — to a tide of more permissive and pragmatic faiths and to fast-rising secularism. He gives voice to a church whose center of global gravity is increasingly shifting south.

But the first Latin American pope also represents a cultural bridge between two worlds — the son of Italian immigrants in a country regarded by some as the New World colony Italy never had. For many Italians, his heritage makes him the next best thing to the return of an Italian pope.

Bergoglio remains a fierce critic of socially progressive trends, including gay marriage, representing a continuity of Benedict XVI’s conservative doctrine. Though questioned for some of his actions during Argentina’s Dirty War, he may also be a target hard for progressives to hit. In recent decades, he has emerged as a champion of social justice and the poor who has spoken out against the evils of globalization and slammed the “demonic effects of the imperialism of money.”

His papal name honors St. Francis of Assisi, the son of wealthy merchants who abandoned all for a life of poverty in the path of Jesus Christ.

At the same time, in the age of 24-hour news cycles and the cult of celebrity excess, he is described by some as so retro as to be something oddly new. He represents a flashback to an old-school view of the Catholic leaders as humble, soft-spoken clerics who walked among their flock and led by example — though he has also used the Internet as a tool to reach lapsed Catholics.

“He knows how to take a municipal bus,” said the Rev. Robert Pelton, the director of Latin American/North American Church Concerns at the University of Notre Dame. “When he became a local ordinary of Buenos Aires, he moved from a large, impressive home to a modest dwelling. He has a sense of social justice, but he can be seen as quite conservative doctrinally.”
(Read more at the Washington Post)

LOCAL REACTION TO POPE FRANCIS:
 • Houston Catholics excited about first pope from the Americas (Chron.com)
• Hispanic Houstonians celebrate first Latin American pope (KPRC 2 News)
• Non-Catholics chime in on new pope (KPRC 2 News)

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