ARGENTINA
The Advertiser
by Oren Dorell USA TODAY
With the pealing of bells and the honking of horns, Catholics across Latin America welcomed and cheered their new pope as a people’s pope who will understand their needs.
Horns honked in his home country of Argentina, where until Wednesday Pope Francis was known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bells rang in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. In Mexico, where people wiped their eyes with tears of excitement at the news, Bishop Eugenio Lira said the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires made it clear from his first address to the crowds that thronged the Vatican that his approach will be a departure from his predecessors.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, when he started saying, ‘Good afternoon,’ just like someone saying hello to a friend,” said Lira, the secretary-general of the Mexican Conference of Bishops. “He will certainly be the pope who is closest to the people of Latin America. He knows the problems of Latin America very well.”
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