Ucannews.com
He
took the name of a humble saint
and then called for a church of
healing. The first non-European
pope in 1,200 years is poised to transform a
place that measures change by the century.
“What makes this pope so important is
the speed with which he has captured the
imaginations of millions who had given up on
hoping for the church,” Time said in its cover
story announcing the news.
Pope Francis, 76, was born Jorge Mario
Bergoglio in Buenos Aires. He was named
archbishop of Argentina in 1998, became a
cardinal in 2001 and was elected pope by
the papal conclave in Vatican City on March
13. He replaced Pope Benedict XVI, 86, who
announced his resignation Feb. 11 citing a
“lack of strength of mind and body” due to his
advanced age.
Francis had earned a reputation for humility
and commitment to the poor long before
assuming leadership of the world’s 1.2 billion
Catholics. Last month, he spoke out against
“trickle-down” economic policies, saying they
have not been proven to work and reflect a
“naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding
economic power.”
The pope also turned heads in recent
months with this comment about
homosexuality. “A person once asked me,
in a provocative manner, if I approved
of homosexuality. I replied with another
question: ‘Tell me, when God looks at a gay
person, does he endorse the existence of
this person with love, or reject and condemn
this person?’ We must always consider the
person.”
“As Pope, he was suddenly the sovereign
of Vatican City and head of an institution so
-sprawling—with about enough followers
to populate China—so steeped in order, so
snarled by bureaucracy, so vast in its charity, so
weighted by its scandals, so polarizing to those
who study its teachings, so mysterious to those
who don’t, that the gap between him and the
daily miseries of the world’s poor might finally
have seemed unbridgeable,”Timesays. “Until
the 266th Supreme Pontiff walked off in those
clunky shoes to pay his hotel bill.” ***
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