Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina has been elected pope, and will be known as Pope Francis. Bergoglio, 76, becomes the first pope from the Americas. He has chosen to be known as Pope Francis. The 76-year-old has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests. Francis, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, reportedly got the second-most votes from the 115 cardinals after Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 papal election, and he has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work that some say is an essential skill for the next pope. In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world's Catholics, Francis has shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly. He is also known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America. White smoke billowed from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel earlier Wednesday, indicating the cardinals selected Francis after two days of voting. Doomsday fanatics claim that a 12th century prophecy states the successor to Benedict XVI will be the last pope before the end of the world. After the Mayan 2012 prophecies failed to materialise, apocalypse aficionados have turned their attention to the purported writings of St Malachy, an Irish saint and Archbishop of Armagh, who lived between 1094 and 1148. St Malachy is said to have travelled to Rome in 1139, where he experienced a vision of future popes, writing down a series of 112 cryptic phrases that described each one in turn. This list was "lost" in the Roman Archives until 1590, found by Benedictine monk Fra Arnold de Wyon. The current Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI, who is stepping down, is number 111. The list ends at 112 with a black pope identified as "Peter the Roman", whose pontificate will allegedly bring the destruction of the city of Rome, the Catholic Church and usher the beginning of the Apocalypse. Saint Malachy's final words were: "Rome, the seat of the Vatican, will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people."
