Being Franciscans in the age of Pope Francis

It was the evening of 13 March 2013 when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran gave the news to the whole world and announced that the new pope had chosen the name Francis. It was then Pope Bergoglio himself who recounted that the intuition to assume this name came to him when his neighbour, the Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, a Franciscan, exhorted him not to forget the poor. I remember that evening well and I recall the newly elected one’s words and gestures, especially his quip about being the pope “taken from the ends of the earth” and his request to be blessed by the faithful gathered in Saint Peter’s before he imparted his blessing to the faithful of Rome and of the entire world: the simple manner of the new pope, the first in the Church’s 2,000 year old history to choose the name of ...