Time Magazine has named People’s Pope their Person of the Year for 2013.
Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs says Pope Francis’s focus on compassion, ability capture the hearts of the public worldwide, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, and shake up beliefs and views on important issues and the new voice of conscience put him at the lead of the pack.
“Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly—young and old, faithful and cynical—as has Pope Francis. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power,” writes Gibbs for the magazine's online news site.
“At a time when the limits of leadership are being tested in so many places, along comes a man with no army or weapons, no kingdom beyond a tight fist of land in the middle of Rome but with the immense wealth and weight of history behind him, to throw down a challenge. The world is getting smaller; individual voices are getting louder; technology is turning virtue viral, so his pulpit is visible to the ends of the earth. When he kisses the face of a disfigured man or washes the feet of a Muslim woman, the image resonates far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church."
Time's second place news maker was Edward Snowden.
Read more: The Choice: Nancy Gibbs on Why Pope Francis Is TIME's Person of the Year 2013 | TIME.com http://poy.time.com/2013/12/11/pope-francis-the-choice/#ixzz2nB8EjOa2
