There's a New Sheriff in Town......New Pope Chosen

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          After hours and hours of deliberation, the Catholic Church has a new Pope. In the Catholic Church's mystical version of 'Survivor', the Argentine born Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been elected as the Church's next Pope. His election is a surprise in that it was generally believed the next Pope would be younger and European. He is 76 and a Jesuit.

          The Catholic Church is the largest religious institution in the world with a reported 1.2 billion members. The new Pope will take on the name of Francis I. He will have a lot of work to do to repair the Church's image after years of child abuse scandals and recent revelations of financial misappropriations within the Vatican. I'm not Catholic so my opinion on that matter is not relevant. However, I would like to see him refocus the Church away from political issues such as gay marriage and more on the teachings of Jesus about social justice.

 

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Maybe it is me, but I just cannot expect

that a pope elected out of a right-wing conclave appointed mostly by John Paul II or Benedict XVI will be a progressive. The indication is that he has a good reputation on social justice; but that is always contextual. He is not a liberation theologist or would not have been there. He is a Jesuit which could be good or bad; hoping you are correct and like St Francis he will concentrate on poverty rather than destroying people's lives. But I read that he turned in 2 of his priests to the Junta in Argentina. Archbishop Romero he is not ... but this is a first, a Jesuit, the choice of Francis and the first from outside of Europe. That doesn't mean he is good ... we will have to see ... the bbc people were really surprised, they were expecting Scola from Milan.

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i am very guardedly optimistic...

a Facebook friend just noted that as far as the Vatican is concerned, this may be the best deal the left could get. i would tend to agree.

from what i understand, though this is all just based on sound bites at the moment, is that his focus was poverty and those types of issues and not the culture crap that Benedict spent so damn much time on.

he's also a Jesuit, which is imo and iirc, the most liberal order, not that that's saying much, but it might be good.

That he named himself after St Francis is also a positive sign.

i guess we'll soon see, but i have hope that at the very least, he will be better than his predecessor. 

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