ROME
Time
By David Von Drehle
March 14, 2013
When a shy little man in tinted eyeglasses walked onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square and bestowed his first wave as Pope Francis, journalists around the world began frantically web-surfing.
All but one.
John Allen Jr. had already written an expansive profile of the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the humble Jesuit Jose Maria Bergoglio. While the rest of the journalistic pack was focused on the Italian Cardinal Scola, the Brazilian Cardinal Scherer, and the Canadian Cardinal Ouellet, the Vatican expert for the National Catholic Reporter recalled the man who finished second in the balloting the last time a pope was chosen:
The general consensus is that Bergoglio was indeed the “runner-up” last time around. He appealed to conservatives in the College of Cardinals as a man who had held the line against liberalizing currents among the Jesuits, and to moderates as a symbol of the church’s commitment to the developing world.
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