Pope Francis: A Pope of many Firsts

Last March 13, 2013, Argentinian Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th Roman Pontiff and assumed the name Francis. He is the first pope born from the Southern Hemisphere, the first pope from Latin America, the first Jesuit pope, the first pope outside of Europe since St. Gregory III and the first to use a new, non-regnal name since Pope Lando (913-914).

pope Francis will be the second pontiff of the 21st century, a time when the Catholic Church is buffeted by scandal after scandal of priestly abuse of children, contraception, women in the priesthood, LGBT rights among others. Francis will have to deal with these issues and his response will determine if the church is willing and flexible enough to adopt to changing times and needs, otherwise, it will slowly precipitate the slow, steady and sure decline of its moral ascendancy over many parts of the world who may still be nominally Catholic.

The Church through Pope Francis will have to decide whether it will continue to serve its dogma and worldview or integrate its teachings into the ordinary life of the 21st century. This is the challenge, a difficult one indeed, but one that will somehow define the role and significance that the church will play in the 21st century. A radical shift in perspective, in what Thomas Kuhn referred to as a "paradigm shift" is urgently needed as the church traverses the path of increasing intellectual fluidity. The advent of the information age has meant that the church is no longer seen as the sole and only source of knowledge and information for all matters of life - the internet has democratized and made readily available the spread of knowledge and information, formerly the exclusive preserve and domain of the church.

The church will have have to confront the rights of LGBT persons, women in the priesthood and the use of artificial contraceptives. It it continues to insist for example on the rigid and essentially exclusionist view it espouses with regards to  LGBT's, then the church will have perpetrated a centuries old hypocrisy and discrimination. Women in the priesthood is another thorny issue that the church will have to deal with, why exclude women in the priesthood? Why insist on their secondary status in church leadership positions? Finally, contraceptives, the church has to look at scientific studies which shows that the use of contraceptives has a significant role in reducing the spread of diseases, infection and other maladies and most of all, helps families plan in a responsible and reasonable way the size of their families. Insistence on theological constructs when confronted by incontrovertible scientific and provable evidences to the contrary will just make the church reactionary, ideological and simply blind to the realities of the 21st century. These are the choices Pope Francis will have to face, and answer to. His actions will determine if the church is truly a church for the modern man.