We have a pope - Jorge Mario Bergoglio - Francis (Fransiskus)
setelah
tahta suci kosong untuk bebeberawa waktu semenjak Paus Benediktus XVI
mengundurkan diri, kini Paus baru telah terpilih. “Habemus papam!”
seperti diberitakan NewyorkTimes berikut ini
The New Pope: Bergoglio of Argentina
VATICAN
CITY — With a puff of white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and to
the cheers of thousands of rain-soaked faithful, a gathering of Catholic
cardinals picked a new pope from among their midst on Wednesday — choosing the cardinal from Argentina,
the first South American to lead the church.
The
new pope, Jorge
Mario Bergoglio (pronounced Ber-GOAL-io), will be called Francis
(Fransiskus), the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He is
also the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years and the first member of
the Jesuit order to lead the church.
In
choosing Francis, 76, who had been the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the
cardinals sent a powerful message that the future of the church lies in the
global south, home to the bulk of the world’s Catholics.
“I
would like to thank you for your embrace,” the new pope, dressed in white, said
from the white balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica as thousands cheered joyously
below. “My brother cardinals have chosen one who is from far away, but here I
am.”
Speaking
in Italian as he blessed the faithful, Francis asked the audience to “pray for
me, and we’ll see each other soon.”
“Good
night, and have a good rest,” he concluded, in a grandfatherly, almost casual
tone.
“Habemus papam!”
members of the crowd shouted in Latin, waving umbrellas and flags. “We have a pope!”
Others cried, “Viva il Papa!”
“It
was like waiting for the birth of a baby, only better,” said a Roman man,
Giuliano Uncini. A child sitting atop his father’s shoulders waved a crucifix.
Francis
is known as a humble man who spoke out for the poor and led an austere life in
Buenos Aires. He was born to Italian immigrant parents and was raised in the
Argentine capital.
The
new pope inherits a church wrestling with an array of challenges that
intensified during his predecessor, Benedict XVI, including a shortage of
priests, growing competition from evangelical churches in the Southern
Hemisphere, a sexual abuse crisis that has undermined the church’s moral
authority in the West and difficulties governing the Vatican itself.
Benedict
abruptly ended his troubled eight-year papacy last month, announcing he was no
longer up to the rigors of the job. He became the first pontiff in 598 years to
resign. The 115 cardinals who are younger than 80 and eligible to vote chose
their new leader after two days of voting.
Pope
Francis spoke by telephone with Benedict on Wednesday evening, said a Vatican
spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. He called it “an act of great
significance and pastorality” that Francis’ first act as pope was to offer a
prayer for his predecessor.
The
Rev. Thomas Rosica of Canada, another Vatican spokesman, recalled meeting
Cardinal Bergoglio a decade ago during preparations for World Youth Day in
Canada, and said the cardinal had told him that he lived very simply, in an
apartment Buenos Aires, and sold the archdiocese’s mansion.
“He
cooks for himself and took great pride in telling us that, and that he took the
bus to work” rather than riding in a car, Father Rosica said.
President
Obama was among the first world leaders to congratulate Francis in a message
that emphasized the pope’s humble roots and New World background.
“As
a champion of the poor and the most vulnerable among us, he carries forth the
message of love and compassion that has inspired the world for more than 2,000
years — that in each other we see the face of God,” Mr. Obama said in a message
released by the White House.
“As
the first pope from the Americas,” the president added, “his selection also
speaks to the strength and vitality of a region that is increasingly shaping
our world, and alongside millions of Hispanic Americans, those of us in the
United States share the joy of this historic day.”
A
doctrinal conservative, Francis has opposed liberation theology, abortion, gay
marriage and the ordination of women, standing with his predecessor in holding
largely traditional views
As
archbishop of Buenos Aires beginning in 1998 and a cardinal since 2001, he
frequently tangled with Argentina’s governments over social issues. In 2010,
for example, he castigated a government-supported law to legalize marriage and
adoption by same-sex couples as “a war against God.”
He
has been less energetic, however, in urging the Argentine church to examine its
own behavior during the 1970s, when the country was consumed by a conflict
between right and left. In what became known as the Dirty War, as many as
30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by a military dictatorship
that seized power in March 1976.
In
a long interview with an Argentine newspaper in 2010, Cardinal Bergoglio
defended his behavior during the dictatorship. He said that he had helped hide
people being sought for arrest or disappearance by the military because of
their political views, had helped others leave Argentina and had lobbied the
country’s military rulers directly for the release and protection of others.
Before
beginning the voting by secret ballot in the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, in a
cloistered meeting known as a conclave, the cardinals swore an oath of secrecy
in Latin, a rite designed to protect deliberations from outside scrutiny — and
to protect cardinals from earthly influence as they seek divine guidance.
The
conclave followed more than a week of intense, broader discussions among the
world’s cardinals about the problems facing the church and their criteria for
its next leader.
“We
spoke among ourselves in an exceptional and free way, with great truth, about
the lights but also about shadows in the current situation of the Catholic
Church,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, a theologian known for his
intellect and his pastoral touch, told reporters this week.
“The
pope’s election is something substantially different from a political
election,” Cardinal Schönborn said, adding that the role was not “the chief
executive of a multinational company, but the spiritual head of a community of
believers.”
Indeed,
Benedict was selected in 2005 as a caretaker after the momentous papacy of John
Paul II, but the shy theologian appeared to show little inclination toward
management. His papacy suffered from crises of communications — with Muslims,
Jews and Anglicans — that, along with a sex abuse crisis that raged back to
life in Europe in 2010, evolved into a crisis of governance.
Critics
of Benedict’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said he had
difficulties in running the Vatican and appeared more interested in the Vatican’s
ties to Italy than to the rest of the world. The Vatican is deeply concerned
about the fate of Christians in the war-torn Middle East.
The
new pope will also inherit power struggles over the management of the Vatican
bank, which must continue a process of meeting international transparency
standards or risk being shut out of the mainstream international banking
system. In one of his final acts as pope, Benedict appointed a German
aristocrat, Ernst von Freyberg, as the bank’s new president.
Francis
will have to help make the Vatican bureaucracy — often seen as a hornet’s nest
of infighting Italians — work more efficiently for the good of the church.
After years in which Benedict and John Paul helped consolidate more power at
the top, many liberal Catholics also hope that the new pope will give local
bishops’ conferences more decision-making power to help respond to the needs of
the faithful.
The
reform of the Roman Curia, which runs the Vatican, “is not conceptually hard,”
said Alberto Melloni, the author of numerous books on the Vatican and the
Second Vatican Council. “it’s hard on a political front, but it will take five
minutes for someone who has the strength. You get rid of the spoil system, and
that’s it.”
The
hard things are “if you want a permanent consultation of bishops’ conferences,”
he added.
For
Mr. Melloni, foreign policy and the church’s vision of Asia would be crucial to
the new pope. “If Roman Catholicism was capable of learning Greek while it was
speaking Aramaic, of learning Celtic while it was speaking Latin, now it either
has to learn Chinese or ‘ciao,'” he said, using the Italian world for
“goodbye.”
Ahead
of the election, cardinals said they were looking for “a pope that understands
the problems of the church at present” and who is strong enough to tackle them,
said Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the archbishop emeritus of Prague, who participated
in the general congregations but was not eligible to vote in a conclave.
He
said those problems included reforming the Roman Curia, handling the sex abuse
crisis and cleaning up the Vatican bank.
“He
needs to be capable of solving these issues,” Cardinal Vlk said as he walked
near the Vatican this week, adding that the next pope needs “to be open to the
world, to the troubles of the world, to society, because evangelization is a
primary task, to bring the Gospel to people.”
The
sexual abuse crisis remains a troubling issue for the church, especially in
English-speaking countries where victims sued dioceses found to have moved
around abusive priests.
On
Wednesday, news reports in California showed that one cardinal elector,
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles; the
archdiocese; and a former priest had reached a settlement of almost $10 million
in four child sex abuse cases, according to the victims’ lawyers.
Becoming
pope also has a human dimension. In one of his final speeches as pope before he
retired on Feb. 18, Benedict said his successor would need to be prepared to
lose some of his privacy.
This document
is coutercy of http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/cardinals-elect-new-pope.html
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