First Impressions of the New Pope

The election of the new pope – Jorge Mario Bergoglio, formerly the Cardinal and Archbishop of Buenos Aires (Argentina) – brought the peoples of the world together for a grand moment in time.  The scene was utterly spectacular and so far beyond something we could make happen ourselves. The genuine connectedness among all peoples was powerfully displayed when new Pope Francis first asked the ebullient crowd to pray for him. Suddenly the hundreds of thousands of people assembled in St. Peter’s square and spilling out through the Via della Conciliazione all the way to the Tiber River became silent. Sheer silence. God’s grandeur and majesty uniting.

The scene likened Elijah’s experience of God atop the mountain when the beauty, goodness and truth of God seized the prophet in a single moment (1 Kings 19:11-12).

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