The choice of a new name is an opportunity for newly elected popes to hint at their agenda for the Catholic Church. In 2005, Joseph Ratzinger chose the name Benedict XVI to reflect his conviction that European civilization was at risk of forgetting its roots in the great Benedictine monasteries of the Early Middle Ages. In 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis to evoke St Francis’s famous closeness to the poor. By choosing a name no pope before him had used, he suggested a willingness to break with Church traditions in other ways.
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