The new pope had been chosen: Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and a Jesuit.
Bergoglio chose the name Francis, evoking the Saint of Assissi and his commitment to the poor.
Pope Francis is 76 years old; he was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. There have been African Popes, a millennium and a half ago, but Francis is the first non-European since then, and the first ever from what old Popes call the New World.
