We have a Pope- All hail the new Pope!!! After about three days of voting, the Conclave of Cardinals have finally elected a new Pope, the 266th in the history of the church.
Pope Francis blessing the crowd
The 76 years old Pope was before now the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He is now Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the western hemisphere! An Argentine son of Italian migrants, he had been the only real contender against Joseph Ratzinger in the first round of balloting that led to the election of the German as Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005.
The first non-European pope in almost 13 centuries (the last was Gregory III, a Syrian, in 731), he was Argentina’s most powerful Roman Catholic prelate and a priest who led a humble lifestyle that reflected his advocacy for the downtrodden. In Latin America, whose social inequality is one of the worst of any region in the world, that truly counted for something.
The accession of a new Pope is always cause for wonderment—if only because the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church has managed to survive more vicissitudes than almost any other kingdom in history. No other institution can claim to have withstood Attila the Hun, the ambitions of the Habsburgs, the Ottoman Turks, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler in addition to Stalin and his successors. Every new pope pushes that longevity forward, through fresh crisis and challenge. And in the 21st century, he does so at the head of a spiritual empire that touches more than 1 billion souls and whose influence crosses borders and contends with other principalities and powers
This is truly hoping he lives up the to challenges and steers the church through the difficult times ahead.
I wish you well Papa!!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are priceless!