Goodbye Cardinal Bergoglio, Hello Pope Francis! The world welcomes you open arms as the new pope. You are taking leadership of the Catholic world at a time of great turmoil and challenge. You have a honeymoon phase with your new position where the world is waiting to learn about you and people are willing to listen to what you have to say and hear you out. There is a new hope with a new pope and we all are crossing our fingers that you'll be able to live up to our expectations and help to lead us forward.
I truly hope that you're able to bring the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and all the religions of the world together, and that you'll be able to find some common ground by which you can build an effective coalition of the world's religious peoples. There is so much division in the religious worlds at the moment and we desperately need to find a common ground, to find new ways to work together, and to lift each other up. As the Pope, you have some influence here, I hope that you'll use it to these means..
I hope that you're able to get the atheists and agnostics of the world to join you on a different common ground. That you can use the realization that we're all people and that our humanity should bind us together, to lift up our weaker brothers, sisters, and children that need our help.
I hope that you're able to bring together the states and nations of the world. There are lots of politicians that have become corrupt over the years and are no longer looking after the needs of the people, they're only looking after the needs of special interests and those that are able to pay for their time and attention, or the various political systems have been broken and world leaders aree unable to manage in the mess we have today. I hope that you're able to get warring parties to come to the table and negotiate, so that we can end all the useless bloodshed and conflict.
I hope that you're able to inspire and motivate the wealthy people and corporations of the world to realize that they have obligations to society and that life is not only about making money. I hope that you're able to inspire them to feed the poor, to create lots of jobs that pay a living wage so that employees can support their families and have a decent life. I hope that you're able to convince the wealthy and the corporations that the world has limited resources that need to be shared equitably and that polluting and destroying our world for short-term profit is not in the best interest of the human and animal populations on our planet.
I hope that you're able to bring the Catholic church up to date while preserving the best of Catholic traditions and customs. Please do a review of all major policies, and where the church needs to come out of the dark ages, shine your light and help them to move forward. There are lots of Catholics who really want to be a part of the church again but many of the church's dogma, teachings, and policies are out dated, and they exclude many who would like to be a part of the church.
I hope that you're able to lift the poor out of poverty, that you're able to help them break the cycle of poverty that only seems to pull in more and more people. I hope that you're able to inspire the uninspired to do wonderful things with their lives.
I hope that we're able to look back in 5 or 10 years and see your time as Pope as a real breakthrough, one that the world has been waiting for. I wish you all the best.
