Pope Francis

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(Examiner.com is a terrible source. Also: nobody cares what some random atheist on the internet thinks of the Pope. External links should be high-quality and relevant.)
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*[[John Paul II]]
 
*[[John Paul II]]
 
*[[Benedict XVI]]
 
*[[Benedict XVI]]
 
==External links==
 
*[http://www.examiner.com/article/pope-francis-i-an-atheist-s-first-impressions Pope Francis I: An atheist’s first impressions]
 
  
 
==References==
 
==References==

Revision as of 08:11, 14 March 2013

"It seems as if my brother cardinals went to find [me] from the end of the earth." (A Pope with a sense of humour?)

Pope Francis (b. 1936), born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was elected to be the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on March 13, 2013. He took the name Francis to honor Saint Francis of Assisi.[1] As he previously served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he is the first Pope hailing from a South American country (or from anywhere in the Americas) and the first Jesuit elected pope.

Politics and social positions

He brings a mixed bag of social positions to the job: when he was made a cardinal in 2001, he asked his fellow Argentines not to come to Rome with him, but to donate the money they would have spent on air fare to the poor.[2] He is a solid supporter of social justice programs, and opted to live in a small house and cook his own meals rather than lead a life of opulence that some celebrity-cardinals and former popes follow.[3] Judging by the level of chatter about his economic positions on Fox News, he might not square off well with American conservative leaders.

However, he is an opponent of gay marriage, contraception and abortion, having gone on the record to say that an Argentine bill that would allow gay marriage was "a real and dire anthropological throwback."[4] Not that we were expecting much else, to be honest; these are pretty non-negotiable for orthodox Catholics.

He is alleged to have been an ally of the junta during Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, and to have been involved in the junta's kidnapping of two priests, but no solid evidence linking him to the kidnapping ever surfaced.[5][6]

See also

References

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