Looking a bit uncomfortable in the spotlights, Jorge Mario Bergoglio came out on the central loggia of the Vatican basilica on the evening of March 13, 2013, and introduced himself to his new diocese as a man from “the end of the earth.” Less than nine months later, this hitherto obscure, former archbishop of Buenos Aires, who had been rescued from ecclesiastical oblivion in the early 1990s by John Paul II, was on the cover of Time, celebrated around the world as the dominant personality of 2013. Now, a full year into his pontificate, Pope Francis continues to be a kind of papal Rorschach blot onto which Catholics of all points of view, as well as politicians and pundits, project their aspirations and fears for the Catholic Church and its place in the 21st-century scheme of things.
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