World Leader, Pope Francis | featured news

Pope Francis suggested in an interview last year that the Catholic Church's rule that priests be celibate "can change" and admitted he was tempted by a woman as a young seminarian.

Pope Francis urged princes, presidents, sheiks and thousands of ordinary people gathered for his installation Mass on Tuesday to protect the environment, the weakest and the poorest, mapping out a clear focus of his priorities as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio was 39 years old when Argentina’s military junta seized power in March 1976. The seven years that followed were a time of infernal darkness in his country. Union leaders, students, journalists and other left-wing activists were rounded up on the mere suspicion of “subversion.” Many were tortured and raped, or tossed alive from military airplanes into the mouth of the Plata River. As many as 30,000 Argentines were murdered or went missing.

It will be an unprecedented meeting of men and minds, a conversation almost without parallel. When Pope Francis meets the pope emeritus, as is expected perhaps as soon as Friday, he will become the first pontiff in modern history to sit down with his predecessor.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the son of a railway worker, eschews the trappings of his office as cardinal and is committed to conservative, traditional doctrine.

Bettors gambling on Pope Benedict's replacement were very much wrong. Argentina's Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, was a consensus 25-1 underdog to be selected at the conclave, gambling expert R.J. Bell of Pregame.com says. At least 15 names were considered ahead of Bergoglio in 12 books accepting wagers on the papal election in Europe and online outside the United States. "Everyone was paying attention to the top dozen or so favorites," Bell says.