UNITED STATES
Bustle
By Katie Zavadski @katiezavadski
For those who thought Edward Snowden had it in the bag, you were wrong: TIME magazine named Pope Francis 2013’s Person of the Year Wednesday. Egypt’s not-really-democratic leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, won the reader poll with 26.2 percent of the vote, followed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with just over 20 percent. Miley Cyrus pulled in third, with 16.3 percent, but let’s be honest: we’d hoped TIME wouldn’t pick her even if she came in first amongst readers. But the two reader frontrunners, while surely influential men, don’t come close to Pope Francis. …
4. HE’S DEALING WITH SEX ABUSE IN THE CHURCH
Done are the days of the church covering up sex abuse! Or so we hope. The new pope acknowledged that such horrors had occurred, offering a prayer in the Netherlands that said, “I wish to express my compassion and to ensure my closeness in prayer to every victim of sexual abuse, and to their families.” He also moved to include sex abuse as a “crime against minors” and launched a committee in the Vatican to investigate such claims. Meanwhile, he also really loves children, in a non-creepy way:
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