The new Pope, Francis the Humble, as he perhaps would like to be known, is an Argentine with a cloudy past.

This in itself is not an offense but, rather, is in keeping with a religious institution that has long been marked by secrecy. From the smoke signals with which the papal conclave makes the fact, if not the process, of its decision known to the world to the wide-ranging coverups of sexual abuse involving priests and bishops, the Catholic Church is too often associated in the popular imagination with the darkest kind of institutional opacity.

Some of the cloudiness in Pope Francis’ past has to do with his relative obscurity during the years when he was still known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, …

Source: The New Yorker