Conclave

I'd like to see Sean O'Malley become pope....I spoke with him in Valencia, Spain once after I received Communion from him...so that would be something to tell my grandkids !!

 

looking at the candidates, my favorite one just going by which one looks the best in his pictures is the Cardinal from Ghana, Peter Turkson

He is the son of a carpenter and vegetable seller from the mining town of Wassa Nsuta in western Ghana. After attending St. Peter’s Regional Seminary in Ghana, he went on to earn two masters degrees in theology and divinity in 1974 at St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in New York. Pope John Paul II named Turkson Archbishop of Cape Coast in 1992 and made him cardinal in 2003.

He is known by friends and colleagues in Ghana as an intellectual and a down-to-earth “humble servant of God” who prays several hours a day, and in his free time enjoys jogging, playing guitar and singing. He speaks English, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew and Greek.

“I was struck by the aura of holiness around him,” said The Very Reverend Father Emmanuel Abbey-Quaye, a senior figure in the Ghana Catholic Bishop’s Conference who was ordained by Turkson in 2005. “He would spend many hours praying every night and morning.”

 

aint gone happen, captain

 

Habemus papum

 

First non-European pope since Victor in the late 2nd century.

 

well, i got what i wanted. he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina (he was born and raised in Buenos Aires, although as his name suggests, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he was the child of Italian immigrants)

as an added bonus, he's the first Jesuit ever to be elected pope (he was the Jesuit provincial, the head Jesuit, of Argentina, before taking over as head of the seminary in Buenos Aires that he himself went to).

for those who don't know who the Jesuits are, they are know a bit a "maverick" order in the church, and they actually got kicked out of the church in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV before being restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII

you would think he picked the name Francis in honor of St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary to Asia...but according to Vatican spokesman Tom Rosica, he chose Francis after in honour of Francis of Assisi (who San Francisco, CA a and St. Francisville, Louisiana, are named after). Interesting no pope has ever picked Francis before

other interesting notes:
--he is the son of a railway worker
--as a teenager, he had a lung removed as a result of an infection

 

he was the runner-up and main challenger of Cardinal Ratzinger at the 2005 conclave

CNN:
Sept 23, 2005: A cardinal has broken his vow of secrecy and released his diary describing the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, revealing in an exceedingly rare account that a cardinal from Argentina was the main challenger ... Excerpts of the diary, published Friday, show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led in each of the four ballots cast in the Sistine Chapel during the mystery-shrouded April 18-19 conclave. But, in a surprise, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, was in second place the whole time.
...
While Bergoglio never threatened Ratzinger's lead -- and made clear he didn't want the job, according to the diary published in the respected Italian foreign affairs magazine Limes -- his runner-up status could signal the next conclave might elect a pope from Latin America, home to half the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics.

National Catholic Reporter:
Mar 3, 2013: various reports identified the Argentine Jesuit as the main challenger to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (at the last conclave). One cardinal later said the conclave had been "something of a horse race" between Ratzinger and Bergoglio, and an anonymous conclave diary splashed across the Italian media in September 2005 claimed that Bergoglio (was the main challenger to Ratzinger)