White smoke heralds the news that there is now a new Papa!! 

White smoke over the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City indicating the selection of a new pope. Photo: REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

We have a Papa!!

Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is one of Argentina’s papal candidates. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

CARDINAL JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO: Bergoglio, 76, has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests. The archbishop of Buenos Aires reportedly got the second-most votes after Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 papal election, and he has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work that some say is an essential skill for the next pope. In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world’s Catholics, Bergoglio has shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly. Bergoglio is known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America.

He is now our Papa!!  And he is a Jesuit.  And his name is now…. 

Pope Francis I.  By the grace of God!!

Let us all pray that God guide his hand and that he has the courage and determination to bravely address the terrible religious and secular problems that have so plunged the people of this world into sadness and darkness for so long a time.

With the white smoke, we pray—let there be light after that white signal—light for the entire world.

God Bless Francis l

Amen.

John Daniel Begg

At Washington DC

Tuesday, 12th March, Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2013