VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times
By Emily Alpert
March 13, 2013
Roman Catholic cardinals chose Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope Wednesday, selecting the Argentine Jesuit to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who resigned Feb. 28, and lead 1.2 billion church followers around the globe. He was chosen after five rounds of voting in the Sistine Chapel.
The Associated Press reported that Bergoglio, who chose the papal name Francis I, is the first Jesuit pope and has spent nearly his entire career in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests. The AP described him as a modernizer who has lived austerely:
Bergoglio, 76, 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, says his official biographer, Sergio Rubin.
Bergoglio would likely encourage the church’s 400,000 priests to hit the streets to capture more souls, Rubin said in an Associated Press interview. He is also most comfortable taking a low profile, and his personal style is the antithesis of Vatican splendor. “It’s a very curious thing: When bishops meet, he always wants to sit in the back rows. This sense of humility is very well seen in Rome,” Rubin said.
Bergoglio is known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America….
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