Members of the Roman Catholic Church in Barbados are elated with the election of the new pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
The 76-year-old Argentinian, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, takes the name Pope Francis I.
The first non-European pope in the modern era, the first South American pope and the first Pope Francis was elected yesterday on the first full day of the cardinals’ conclave in the Sistine Chapel.
A thrilled Monsignor Vincent Blackett of the St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church told the DAILY NATION yesterday that the local chapter of the Catholic Church was joyful and elated that “something good has happened that has excited the entire world”.
“I don’t know if words can express the way I feel or the way the two billion Catholics around the world feel,” he said.
Blackett said that when the white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel signalling the election of the new pope, he began to receive text messages from “people who are Catholics, non-Christians and Muslims, expressing how happy they were that a pope had been chosen”.
He said that he was especially proud that Pope Francis was the first non-European Pope coming from the Third World. Blackett explained that the Catholic Church in the Caribbean was linked to the Latin American Episcopal Conference. (AH)
