Pope Francis is TIME’s Person of the Year

A wor­thy choice:

These days it is brac­ing to hear a leader say any­thing that annoys any­one. Now lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives alike face a choice as they lis­ten to a new voice of con­science: Which mat­ters more, that this charis­mat­ic leader is say­ing things they think need to be said or that he is also say­ing things they’d rather not hear?

The heart is a strong mus­cle; he’s propos­ing a rig­or­ous exer­cise plan. And in a very short time, a vast, glob­al, ecu­meni­cal audi­ence has shown a hunger to fol­low him. For pulling the papa­cy out of the palace and into the streets, for com­mit­ting the world’s largest church to con­fronting its deep­est needs and for bal­anc­ing judg­ment with mer­cy, Pope Fran­cis is TIME’s 2013 Per­son of the Year.

If we had to choose a per­son of the year, it’d be Pope Fran­cis, and Edward Snow­den would be our oth­er choice. Snow­den and Fran­cis have each had a big impact on human­i­ty and the world com­mu­ni­ty in 2013. Both of them have demon­strat­ed courage and resource­ful­ness. Fran­cis has tak­en over as the head of one of the world’s old­est and largest reli­gious insti­tu­tions, the Catholic Church, while Edward Snow­den has tak­en on the world’s most pow­er­ful sig­nals intel­li­gence out­fit, the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency, which has been oper­at­ing above the law for years.

Popes have been cho­sen as TIME’s Per­son of the Year before; one could argue Fran­cis was the safe choice. But the Catholic Church has not had a non-Euro­pean pope for cen­turies. It has not had a pope in recent years who put the needs of his flock above the­ol­o­gy. Fran­cis is a true min­is­ter, not just a pon­tiff, and that is what makes him such a great leader, wor­thy of our respect.

TIME observes:

The papa­cy is mys­te­ri­ous and mag­i­cal: it turns a sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an into a super­star while reveal­ing almost noth­ing about the man him­self. And it rais­es hopes in every cor­ner of the world—hopes that can nev­er be ful­filled, for they are irrec­on­cil­able. The elder­ly tra­di­tion­al­ist who pines for the old Latin Mass and the devout young woman who wish­es she could be a priest both have hopes. The ambi­tious mon­sign­or in the Vat­i­can Curia and the evan­ge­liz­ing dea­con in a remote Fil­ipino vil­lage both have hopes. No Pope can make them all hap­py at once.

But what makes this Pope so impor­tant is the speed with which he has cap­tured the imag­i­na­tions of mil­lions who had giv­en up on hop­ing for the church at all. Peo­ple weary of the end­less pars­ing of sex­u­al ethics, the buck-pass­ing infight­ing over lines of author­i­ty when all the while (to bor­row from Mil­ton), “the hun­gry Sheep look up, and are not fed.”

In a mat­ter of months, Fran­cis has ele­vat­ed the heal­ing mis­sion of the church — the church as ser­vant and com­forter of hurt­ing peo­ple in an often harsh world — above the doc­tri­nal police work so impor­tant to his recent pre­de­ces­sors. John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI were pro­fes­sors of the­ol­o­gy. Fran­cis is a for­mer jan­i­tor, night­club bounc­er, chem­i­cal tech­ni­cian and lit­er­a­ture teacher.

For so many peo­ple, Fran­cis is the pope they have long yearned for.

I recent­ly joined the now-retired pas­tor who found­ed my fam­i­ly’s parish com­mu­ni­ty for his eight­i­eth birth­day cel­e­bra­tion. I asked him what he thought of Pope Fran­cis. He grinned and told me, “He should have come fifty years ago!”

I was­n’t around fifty years ago, but I agree: Pope Fran­cis’ arrival was long over­due. Now that we have him, I hope that we get to keep him for a long while. At least a decade, and hope­ful­ly much longer than that.