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Argentina's Cardinal Bergoglio Is The New Pope; He Will Be 'Francis I'

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio has been elected pope, the first pontiff from Americas.
AP File Photo/Natacha Pisarenko
Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio has been elected pope, the first pontiff from Americas.

The Catholic church has chosen a new pope. It is 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

White smoke is billowing from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, according to the Associated Press, meaning 115 cardinals in a papal conclave have elected a new leader for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. The identity of the new pope is not yet known.

The new pope is expected to appear on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica within an hour, after a church official announces "Habemus Papum'' and "We have a pope'' and gives the name of the new pontiff in Latin.

The conclave was called after Pope Benedict XVI resigned last month, throwing the church into turmoil and exposing deep divisions among cardinals tasked with finding a manager to clean up a corrupt Vatican bureaucracy as well as a pastor who can revive Catholicism in a time of growing secularism.

NPR

Decades Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due

John Williams' Stoner sold just 2,000 copies when it was originally published in 1965. It's now acknowledged as a classic work, is a best-seller across Europe and the No. 1 novel in the Netherlands.
NPR

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th-century artist who liked to play with his food, transforming it into the building blocks of many of his fantastical portraits. Artist Philip Haas has taken those portraits out of museums, reinterpreting them as colossal statues that interact with the natural environment.
NPR

Political Takeaways: Headaches For The White House

Controversies dominated this past week's political headlines, leaving the Obama White House on the defensive, trying to contain any lasting damage. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Mara Liasson.
NPR

Young Kenyans Build Mobile Apps For Local Use

College students and recent graduates crammed the top floor of a tech hub in Nairobi for a competition built around the theme "Solutions for the Next Billion Mobile Users." Africa has more than 600 million mobile phone users (approximately 11 percent of the global total) – and the number is growing.

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