Pope Bergoglio is, of course, the first Supreme Pontiff ever born in the southern half of the world , where only about one tenth of the human population lives.
This is quite a fast turn of events, historically. The first man who would be pope and ever went south of the equator was Blessed Pius IX, Pope Mastai Ferretti, who was sent as an official to the Apostolic Nunciature in Chile, where he stayed from 1823 to 1825. Future Pius XII, Cardinal Pacelli, would do so as well, when he visited Brazil and Argentina, to which he travelled as the Papal Legate to the 32nd International Eucharistic Congress, held in Buenos Aires (October 1934, two years before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in that city).
The first Pope to visit South America was Paul VI, in his visit to Bogotá - located in the Northern Hemisphere - in 1968, but a reigning Pope actually only crossed the equatorial line into the Southern Hemisphere when the same pontiff visited Western Samoa in 1970, coming from the Philippines, in his visit to Asia and Oceania. After leaving Samoa, he would also visit Australia.
The first Cardinal of the Southern Hemisphere was the Irish-born Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, Patrick Francis Moran, created a Cardinal by Leo XIII in 1885. The first Cardinal born in the Southern Hemisphere and in all of Latin America was Cardinal Joaquim Arcoverde de Albuquerque Cavalcanti, Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, created a Cardinal by Saint Pius X in 1905. And the first Argentinian Cardinal was Santiago Luis Copello, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, created a Cardinal by Pius XI on Dec. 16, 1935, just one year before the birth of the new Pope, on Dec. 17, 1936.
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