VATICAN CITY
The Province
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has opened his pontificate with a visit to Rome’s main basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a day after cardinals elected him the first pope from the Americas in a bid to resurrect a Catholic Church in crisis.
Italy’s RAI state television said the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, entered the basilica through a side entrance Thursday morning just after 8 a.m. and left about 30 minutes later. He had told a crowd of some 100,000 people packed in a rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square just after his election that he intended to pray to the Madonna “that she may watch over all of Rome.”
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