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What Choosing a New Pope Means for a World Searching for Meaning
Why the search for a new pope matters to the entire world
Pope Francis has never been a stranger to making big headlines. It is no surprise, then, that his death on April 21 set off a veritable avalanche of news stories detailing his life, his influence, and the process of choosing his replacement.
Reading those stories reveals more than just the story of one pontiff’s life or the nitty gritty details of how the next pope will be chosen.
What are we really talking about when we talk about the pope?
Pope Francis led the Roman Catholic Church for twelve years
Pope Francis was 88 when he died, and was still the head of the Roman Catholic Church (charged with leading the world’s more than 1.4 billion Catholics), the bishop of Rome, and the sovereign of the Vatican City State. He had been in that role for twelve years, since his election in 2013.
He rose to this prominence after being born in much more humble conditions in 1930s Argentina, where his birth name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and his parents were Italian immigrants.
Although many obituaries chose to focus on Pope Francis’s progressive legacy, or…
