There was white smoke over Rome after dark fell there, and bells were tolling. After just a little more than a day, a new Pope had been chosen, on the fifth ballot. An hour of uncertainty passed, then a French cardinal came out and announced, in Latin, the name this Pope was leaving behind: Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires and a Jesuit. He got to pick a new name; John Paul I, the Pope of thirty-three days, chose his as a symbol of combing the qualities of Paul VI and John XXII. So it might matter a good deal that Bergoglio chose Francis, evoking the saint of Assisi and his commitment to the poor. He will be the first Pope with this name. If that is a symbol that will have to be proven out, the selection of a Pope from Latin America is a more immediate one. It affirms the Church’s transformation, and may give it better footing in the world, if not a grasp of it.
Pope Francis I is seventy-six. He reportedly came in second place when Benedict XVI was elected. One of the first details mentioned after his name became known was that he takes public transformation. As with kings we like to imagine posts in disguise, walking in dark streets. That is not so likely, whatever Francis's preferences: when he came out, after a moment in which the curtain on the balcony overlooking the square seemed to quiver, he smiled in a way that made him hard to forget. It made him seem, really, like someone who had been known to the crowd for a long time.
The white smoke, by the way, is from the burning of the ballots. So is the black smoke, but different chemicals are shaken on top of each, as they are put in a special oven, in one of the gestures in which Vatican officials assume the aspect of alchemists. This morning, as the Times reported, gave out the recipe this morning: for white and a Pope, add potassium chlorate, milk sugar, and pine rosin. (Andy Borowitz, our satirical correspondent, came up with the headline “VATICAN CALLS WHITE SMOKE A FALSE ALARM: ‘WE WERE JUST BURNING DOCUMENTS’ ”) There are documents that may be troubling waiting for Francis in a safe in the sealed Papal apartments, the detritus of the Vatileaks scandal. One wonders if the will be troubled by what he reads there, or if he will shrug.
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Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina elected new pope - Europe - Al Jazeera English
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