From Fox News. God bless him.

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been elected by his peers as the new pope, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas.

He has chosen to be known as Pope Francis I.

The 76-year-old has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests.

Francis, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, reportedly got the second-most votes from the 115 cardinals 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, Francis has shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly.

He is also known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America. Like other Jesuit intellectuals, Bergoglio has focused on social outreach. Catholics are still buzzing over his speech last year accusing fellow church officials of hypocrisy for forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes.

Read it all.

From Fox News.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis I. May God bless and guide him in this daunting task.

From Christianity Today online.

A thoughtful piece. Check it out and see what you think.

Few Christian institutions have the historic scale and scope of the

Catholic Church in the arenas of health care, education, and works-of-mercy outreach to the poor. The Catholic Church is the largest health-care provider in the world, managing 26 percent of all health-care facilities. It runs the largest U.S. K–12 private school network, serving more than 2 million students. But scarcer esources mean that needed schools, clinics, and ministries face closure every year. This reality provides Protestants and Catholicsa new context for collaboration in mission. We trust the new pope will support such partnerships.

Relations between Catholics and Protestants are warmer than ever. For example, the Vatican has reached out to conservative Episcopalians who have quit the national church. It has accommodated their desire to retain their Anglican identity and established communion with them. There is a similar plan developing for Lutherans in Germany. But the era of competition is not over: In Brazil, the nation with the largest Catholic population, tensions remain at boiling point. The influx of cradle Catholics by the millions into evangelical and charismatic congregations is historic. It shows few signs of tapering off.

Catholic-Protestant partnership, then, whether at the grassroots or the grasstops, must be grounded in mutual commitments: to the authority of Scripture, the atoning work of Christ, the need for individual salvation and conversion, and the expression of the gospel through evangelism and social action. But given the monumental spiritual and social challenges of the 21st century, it is more important than ever that Protestants and Catholics figure out how and where they can work together.