NEW DETAILS: Pope Francis Greets Vatican Crowd
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Catholic church has chosen a new pope.
The Vatican has announced Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina is the newly elected Pope, the first ever from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chose the name Pope Francis.
White smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel Tuesday morning, meaning 115 cardinals in a papal conclave have elected a new leader for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.
The new pope appeared briefly on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, greeting the crowd below, after a church official announced "Habemus Papum" -- "We have a pope" 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.
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