Avedis Hadjian
The election of Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I took the world by surprise, charming Catholics and non-Catholics alike with his plain demeanor and unpretentious manner of relating to people, bringing simplicity to a Church with a 2,000-year history that is worth its weight in gold.
For Argentine-Armenians, his election is particularly significant, and has been moving. Many of them have seen him in person, and not a few have spoken with the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics all over the world. Monsignor Bergoglio, an easy man to approach who used public transportation in Buenos Aires at the time he was the city’s archbishop, was a close friend of the Armenian community and the Prelate of the Armenian Church in Argentina, Archbishop Kissag Mouradian.
