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| Pope Francis |
During his nine months in office, the Pope had pulled "the papacy out of the palace and into the streets", managing editor Nancy Gibbs said.
"Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly - young and old, faithful and cynical," she added.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was runner-up.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the then cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, was made Pope last March. He named himself Francis after a 12th Century Italian saint who turned his back on an aristocratic lifestyle to work with the poor.
Since then, he has eschewed some of the more regal trappings of high office, made headlines by washing the feet of prisoners, and is planning some major reforms to the Church.
"In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very centre of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalisation, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power," Ms Gibbs wrote. » | Wednesday, December 11, 2013
