The new pope: RELIGION NEWS SERVICE By Franklin Sherman P


ope Francis, elected just a year ago this month, has already made a strong impression around the world, and not just with Roman Catholics. Time


magazine named him its person of the year, as did the Italian edition of Vogue. At World Youth Day in Brazil, he celebrated mass for more than 3 million people on the beach at Copacabana. Why all the celebrity? He is the first non-European


pope in many centuries. Te man selected by the red-robed cardinals who assembled at the Vatican last March to elect a new pope was the archbishop of Bue- nos Aires, Cardinal Mario Jorge Bergoglio. Already in Argentina he was unusual. Known as “the people’s arch- bishop,” he spurned the episcopal palace and chose to


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live in a simple apartment elsewhere in the city, taking the bus to work. He wore the garb of an ordinary priest and walked oſten among the poor. As pope he has continued this same humble style. On


the day of his election, as he spoke to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, he called on them to pray for him and to bless him before he blessed them. As in his home country, he has chosen to dwell not


in the luxurious papal apartments but in a simple room in the Vatican guesthouse, where he has breakfast every morning with the other residents and conducts a brief prayer service for them. He has given up the red papal shoes and elaborate garments, favoring a simple white cassock. Disdaining the official Mercedes limousine, he uses a 20-year old Renault with 190,000 miles that was


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