Habemus Papam

We have a pope!

The announcement of a new bishop of Rome yesterday is importance to all Christians, not just those who are Roman Catholics.  The election of Jorge Mario Borgelio is a reminder of how much the demographics of the faith are changing.  For the first time in 1,200 years a pope calls some place other than Europe home; for the first time ever, that home is in the New World.  And while Pope Francis may be of Italian heritage, he is clearly a man of Latin America.  The church is changing; what we may have long seen as normative is quickly becoming marginal.  White and  European, once the dominant feature of Christians, is being superceded by Non-white and of the Global South.

These changes can be scary, even off-putting.  We can be unsettled by the unfamiliar, the different.  Yet these developments should be reassuring, even a cause for celebration.  For they mean that the universal church is vibrant and dynamic, that it is drawing in new people in new places.  Some may be called to Roman Catholicism, some to evangelical settings, and others to what we know as mainline Protestantism.   In some sense, it doesn't matter.  What does is that people are being called to engage with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, yes, we have a pope.

But even better, we have the Gospel made know to us in Jesus!

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