TIME editors on Wednesday named Pope
Francis their Person of the Year.
NSA leaker Edward Snowden came in
second, while Edith Windsor, who sued the federal government to
recognize her marriage to another woman and won, rounded out the top
3.
(Related: Edith
Windsor makes short list for TIME 2013 Person of the Year.)
“He really stood out to us as someone
who has changed the tone and the perception and the focus of one of
the world's largest institutions in an extraordinary way,” Nancy
Gibbs, the magazine's managing editor, told the AP.
Pope Francis, who was elected in March,
has said that the Roman Catholic Church has “locked itself up in
small things” by obsessing over abortion, contraception and
homosexuality.
Conservatives within the church fired
back, pointing to the pope's condemnation of passage of a gay
marriage law in his native Argentina.
In response to Illinois becoming the
16th state to legalize same-sex marriage, Archbishop
Salvatore Cordileone, who leads the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense
of Marriage and heads the diocese of San Francisco, cited the pope's
words in a blog post criticizing the new law.
“Pope Francis has forcefully reminded
us that we are to show love and respect to all people and to seek
their greatest good, and he therefore continues to clearly promote
and defend marriage and family, recognizing that this is in
everyone's best interest as members of a common society,”
Cordileone
wrote. “In fact, when confronting an effort to redefine
marriage in his home country of Argentina, he said as Archbishop of
Buenos Aires: 'The identity of the family, and its survival, are in
jeopardy here: father, mother, and children.' He even added: 'At
stake is the total rejection of God's law engraved in our hearts.'
It is therefore disgraceful that some legislators would manipulate
the words of Pope Francis to suggest that he would support marriage
redefinition.”