We Have a New Pope: Cardinal Bergoglio Is Pope Francis.

Pope Francis is seventy-six. He reportedly came in second when Benedict XVI was elected. He was born in Buenos Aires, in 1936.

There have been African Popes, a millennium and a half ago, but Francis is the first non-European since then, and the first ever from what old Popes call the New World. One of the first details mentioned after his name became known was that he takes public transportation. As with kings, we like to imagine Popes in disguise, walking in dark streets. That is not so likely, whatever Francis’s preferences: when he came out, after a moment in which the curtain on the balcony overlooking the square seemed to quiver, he smiled in a way that made him hard to forget. It made him seem, really, like someone who had been known to the crowd for a long time. That may just be the daze of a first-glance surprise, but it is different from the reaction to Benedict.