CNN news 2013-03-19 加文本

cnn news 2013-03-19

Our other new world leader is the chief of state, for Vatican City, you probably know him better by a different title, Pope, the leader the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, as we told you yesterday. There is a new Pope, Pope Francis, we'll get back to that name in a second, but before he took it, he was cardinal Jorge Bogoglio. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936 before he became a priest, Bogoglio studied to be a chemist, he was ordained in 1969, became a cardinal in 2001, he was supposedly the runner up to become Pope in 2005. This year, he was one of the oldest papal candidates. He chose the name of Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. A catholic who was famous for his work with the poor.

The Vatican experts said the name choice is very significant, he said it shows the new Pope is focused on rebuilding the Catholic Church. During this mass service yesterday, Pope Francis talked about moving the Catholic Church forward. He's already made history, he is the first South American Pope. Tom Foreman looks at the numbers involved in his election.

To understand just how astounding this election is, you have to consider the collision that occured between the 115 cardinal electors in this room and 1.2 billion catholics all over the planet. Look at where they are, if you go out to places like Oceania and Asia, out there you'll get relatively small numbers, 9 million in Oceania, you move to Asia, you get about 130 million, over the Africa, 185 million. Then Europe, with 285 million, that has always been the place where Popes came from. But look at what has changed. Here is North America, United States, Canada, we're talking about here, with 85 million catholics, and then comes the power house, all of Latin America with 501 million catholics, that's almost half of the world's catholic population. And bear in mind, over here, North America, one out of three catholic says he is Hispanic, so you can see the tremendous power here. If they were in democracy, no question, this is kind of Pope would be elected. But it's not democracy, so look at what happened in this room, that's so astonishing.

Considering Italy for a moment, this is one country with just under 56 million catholics, compared that to Latin America, that I mentioned before, a whole region with 501 million catholics. But now looked at the cardinals who were in this room to vote on all of this. Italy, as small as it is, had 28 cardinals voting in this room, whereas Latin America as huge as it is, only had 19, only two of those from Argentina. The only way this election happened was for more peope in this side to finally say, the world really is changing for Catholic Church after 2000 years, it really is changing and the church has to answer to it, and this Pope is the result.