Habemus Papam!

White smoke, signaling that a new Pope had been chosen

Because I am currently taking a Roman Catholicism class, I have been keeping a watchful eye out to see who the new pope will be. As you very well should be aware, today the new pope was selected and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina made the transformation to Pope Francis.

As expected, there has been quite a buzz with this new selection. CNN reports that the papacy election created a very large spike on the internet; at it's peak, Twitter reported 130,000 tweets per minute!

Pope Francis

So what is so amazing about this event, and why does everyone (Catholic or not) care about this? Well, simply put: the Pope is a world leader and represents about 1.2 billion Catholics. In addition, the way that this election came about was very unique; as I'm sure you already know, Pope Benedict XVI (now referred to as 'emeritus pope') resigned saying that he was not physically capable enough to continue in the papacy. This has not been done for almost 600 years, so it was bound to draw the attention of everyone, regardless of their religious views.

There are thousands are articles being published about Pope Francis and countless stipulations of what type of papacy he will lead. Here are some interesting tidbits I picked up from this article and general conversation that I thought I would share with you:

• He is the first pope from Latin America
• He is the first Jesuit pope
• He is 76 and only has one lung
• He chose to be named after St. Francis of Assisi who was known for his work with the poor; apparently St. Francis Assisi gave up all of his riches to live a more simple life - this is why many people stipulate that he will do wonders for needy during time as pope.
• He holds degrees in chemistry, philosophy, and theology
• During college before he joined the church he worked as a bouncer in a bar
• Instead of living in the archbishop's palace in Buenos Aires and traveling via chauffeured limousine, he chose to live in a modest apartment and take the public transit
• He is reportedly rather conservative; he does not condone gay marriage or gay couples being able to adopt, he is against most forms of birth control, abortion, and does not believe woman should play a larger role in the church.

So, that's that. Now you can at least have some interesting facts to contribute in a conversation, should the need arise!