By Denise M. Burke, Esq.
So many were overjoyed yesterday to hear the words, "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam." I must admit that I began to cry when I saw the white smoke rising from the Sistene Chapel and also teared-up when Pope Francis asked for our prayers before blessing us.
I, like so many others, have been eager to learn more about the man who will lead us. George Weigel, who has spent some time with our new Pope, offers some insightful analysis at National Review Online:
"The wheelchair-bound beggar at the corner of Via della Conciliazione and Via dell’Erba this morning had a keen insight into his new bishop: “Sono molto contento; e una profeta” (“I’m very happy; he’s a prophet”). That was certainly the overwhelming impression I took away from the hour I spent with the archbishop of Buenos Aires and future pope last May — here was a genuine man of God, who lives “out” from the richness and depth of his interior life; a bishop who approaches his responsibilities as a churchman and his decisions as the leader of a complex organization from a Gospel-centered perspective, in a spirit of discernment and prayer. The intensity with which Cardinal Bergoglio asked me to pray for him, at the end of an hour of wide-ranging conversation about a broad range of local and global Catholic issues, was mirrored last night in his unprecedented request to the vast crowd spilling out of St. Peter’s Square and down toward the Tiber to pray for him before he blessed them. Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, was the first bishop of Rome to adopt the title Servus servorum Dei (Servant of the Servants of God). That ancient description of the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church will be embodied in a particularly winsome way in Pope Francis, who named himself for the Poverello of Assisi, the most popular saint in history."
Read the entirety of George Weigel’s analysis at The First American
Pope.
So many were overjoyed yesterday to hear the words, "Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam." I must admit that I began to cry when I saw the white smoke rising from the Sistene Chapel and also teared-up when Pope Francis asked for our prayers before blessing us.
I, like so many others, have been eager to learn more about the man who will lead us. George Weigel, who has spent some time with our new Pope, offers some insightful analysis at National Review Online:
"The wheelchair-bound beggar at the corner of Via della Conciliazione and Via dell’Erba this morning had a keen insight into his new bishop: “Sono molto contento; e una profeta” (“I’m very happy; he’s a prophet”). That was certainly the overwhelming impression I took away from the hour I spent with the archbishop of Buenos Aires and future pope last May — here was a genuine man of God, who lives “out” from the richness and depth of his interior life; a bishop who approaches his responsibilities as a churchman and his decisions as the leader of a complex organization from a Gospel-centered perspective, in a spirit of discernment and prayer. The intensity with which Cardinal Bergoglio asked me to pray for him, at the end of an hour of wide-ranging conversation about a broad range of local and global Catholic issues, was mirrored last night in his unprecedented request to the vast crowd spilling out of St. Peter’s Square and down toward the Tiber to pray for him before he blessed them. Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, was the first bishop of Rome to adopt the title Servus servorum Dei (Servant of the Servants of God). That ancient description of the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church will be embodied in a particularly winsome way in Pope Francis, who named himself for the Poverello of Assisi, the most popular saint in history."
Read the entirety of George Weigel’s analysis at The First American
Pope.
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