After five votes…
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Born: Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Education: Studied at Theological Faculty of San Miguel. Received licentiate in philosophy.
Ordained for the Jesuits on Dec. 13, 1969.
Languages: Besides his native Spanish, Bergoglio also speaks Italian and German.
CARDINAL JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO: Bergoglio, 76, has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests. The archbishop of Buenos Aires reportedly got the second-most votes after Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 papal election, and he has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work that some say is an essential skill for the next pope. In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world’s Catholics, Bergoglio has shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly. Bergoglio is known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America.
Quotes and views on poverty and homosexuality:
“The suffering of innocent and peaceful continues to slap us, the contempt for the rights of individuals and peoples are so far away, the rule of money with his demonic effects as drugs, corruption, trafficking people, including children, along with material and moral poverty are big problems.”
A champion of liberation theology which some thought might have been too much for conservatives in the Vatican, he nonetheless is considered a candidate that everyone in the higher echelons of the church respects. He becomes the church’s first Latin American pope.
Related articles
- Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (local10.com)
- Argentina has very different papal candidates (miamiherald.com)
- Papabile of the Day: Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina (ncronline.org)
- Argentina’s papal candidates: Bergoglio and Sandri (voxxi.com)
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Is this the first time a pope has been from outside the Europe?
At least from the Americas, but I think so.