BY KIAYA SECHREST – Editor-in-Chief
According to biography.com, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2013, he became the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and the first pope elected from the Americas.
Now better known as Pope Francis, he chose his papal title after St. Francis of Assisi of Italy. For the first time since he’s been elected, Pope Francis visited the United States of America on an apostolic journey. He spent two and a half days in Washington D.C. on September 22-24, two and a half days in New York City on September 24-26, and two days in Philadelphia on September 26th and 27th.
Pope Francis was greeted with overwhelming crowds in each city, filled with both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. His face and name were plastered across newspapers and websites, and even made an appearance on one of SnapChat’s location filters, with the caption “They See Me Rollin,'” as he rode through towns in his white Jeep Wrangler Popemobile.
Freshman at George Washington University in D.C., Sera Royal, waited streetside patiently for the Papal Parade along the National Mall with fellow students beginning at 4 am, with the Pope’s arrival only expected around 11:00 am.
“Since I’m not Catholic, the pope isn’t really an important religious figure for me, so it was more his celebrity and especially his new approaches towards a lot of important issues,” Royal stated as her reason for camping out early on Wednesday the 23rd.
Pope Francis has been known for being more merciful towards those who may have broken the rules of the church in the past, such as abortion and divorce. He advocates that forgiveness should be given to those who put in the effort to ask for it.
Royal said that those around her were generally excited to see him, “Many of them were older people or mothers and their young children, and I think for them it was more about the religious experience.”
While most were there for positive reasons, Royal also saw protestors yelling and holding signs, “At one point it got pretty intense and the crowd that was there to see the pope started shouting at them to go home and then started shouting ‘Peace, Love, and Mercy!’ over and over again.”
However, Royal still sticks to the fact that it was a once in a lifetime experience she was happy to take part in, “Once the pope came, there were a lot of tears from the people around me – they saw the pope and it overwhelmed them.”
People traveled from every corner of the country to see Pope Francis, and his visit will be one that is remembered for years to come.
World News 