Argentina's Jorge Mario Bergoglio is Pope Francis I

I was laughing this morning when I checked my text messages. Right before starting my 11:10am class my wife writes, "White smoke. New pope."

It's a very interesting selection, supposedly a new direction for the Catholic Church.

At Telegraph UK, "Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio becomes 266th Pope: Pope Francis the humble, first pontiff from the Americas":

Blinking and looking as surprised as anyone, he stepped from behind the blood-red velvet curtains and acknowledged the rapturous cheers from the thousands thronging St Peter’s Square.

With the words “buona sera” — good evening — Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a 76-year-old Argentine, became the Roman Catholic Church’s 266th pope, the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium, the first from the Americas and the first Jesuit to ascend to the throne of St Peter.

He expressed wonder that his 114 brother cardinals had looked to “the end of the world” to find a successor to Benedict XVI. Cardinal Bergoglio was an unexpected choice — he had not featured in any of the front-runner lists that were drawn up by Vatican-watchers in the days before the election.

A stunned-looking Pope Francis I, dressed in white vestments and with a crucifix around his neck, shyly waved to the crowd of tens of thousands who shrugged off the rain and cold in the square below.

The appearance of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney had earlier electrified Rome.

Within seconds, people were running up the avenue that leads from the River Tiber to St Peter’s Square.

“They’ve chosen, they’ve chosen,” a woman told her daughter as they hurried across rain-soaked cobbles, two small figures in a river of hundreds hurrying to the seat of the Roman Catholic Church.

Groups of young people sang and danced in front of television cameras and mobile phone networks crashed as tens of thousands of people called friends and relations.

They waved flags and shouted “Viva Il Papa” — without yet knowing who Il Papa was — as more people crammed into the square.

And from around the web, in no particular order:

* At Life News, "New Pope Francis called homosexual ‘marriage’ a ‘machination of the Father of Lies’."

* At the Los Angeles Times, "New pope: Latinos overjoyed with selection of Argentine."

* At the Wall Street Journal, "Official Text of Pope Francis’ First Speech to World."

* At the New Yorker, "We Have a New Pope: Cardinal Bergoglio Is Francis."

* At the Guardian UK, "Jorge Mario Bergoglio: from railway worker's son to Pope Francis."

* At Gateway Pundit, "Pope Francis Linked to Anti-Marxist ‘Comunione e Liberazione’ Organization."

* At National Review, "A Jesuit Named Francis!"

* At London's Daily Mail, "Did he fail to stand up to Argentina's brutal junta? Critics say Pope did little to help those who disappeared when country was under right-wing military rule."

* At the Economist, "The Vatican turns south: A modest opportunity."

* At the Canada Free Press, "Richard Viguerie: Election of Pope Francis Signals Strength of Traditional Catholic Moral Teachings."

* At the Washington Post, "Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, known for simplicity and conservatism."

* At Der Spiegel, "White Smoke: Argentinian Bishop Becomes Pope Francis I."

* At the New York Times, "The New Pope: Bergoglio of Argentina."