Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio will lead the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.
Chosen on Wednesday by a gathering of Roman Catholic cardinals, the 76-year-old former archbishop of Buenos Aires will now be known as Pope Francis.
He is in some ways a history-making pontiff – he is the first from the Jesuit order which is “noted for its educational, missionary and charitable works, once regarded by many as the principal agent of the Counter-Reformation and later a leading force in modernising the church,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He is also the first pope not to come from a European country in about 1,200 years although he was born in Argentina to parents of Italian descent. He is revered for his outreach to his country’s poor.
He is said to be living in a small flat – eschewing a formal bishop's residence and had given up a limousine for the bus.
Although he hails from the country that was the first in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage in 2010, he is known to back the Vatican’s traditional positions on abortion, gay marriage, the ordination of women and other major issues.
According to the National Catholic Register, Pope Francis had in 2010 vigorously opposed same-sex marriage and gay adoption saying that if legalised, it will “seriously damage the family.”
“[T]he Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family," he wrote to the four monasteries in Argentina. "At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts.”
He added: “Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
In a New York Times profile, the new Pope is regarded by many in his country to be a “passionate defender of the poor and disenfranchised.”
The Times reported: “In 2001 he surprised the staff of Muñiz Hospital in Buenos Aires, asking for a jar of water, which he used to wash the feet of 12 patients hospitalized with complications from the virus that causes AIDS. He then kissed their feet, telling reporters that ‘society forgets the sick and the poor.’”
Like his predecessor Pope Benedict who resigned last month, the new Pope reportedly believes that condoms "can be permissible" to prevent infection although he opposed the government's distribution of free contraception.
In 2012, he delivered a blistering attack on priests who refuse to baptise children to unmarried women, calling them “today's hypocrites.”
"In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptise the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalise the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptised!"