The new leader of the Catholic Church, Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, promises to be a pre-eminent spokesperson making the case for life in the world. Taking the name Francis I, Cardinal Bergoglio has spent many years living a life of simplicity and poverty modeled after his patron, St. Francis of Assisi. According to Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, the new pope lives in a “simple and non-threatening way,” able to relate to the common person and converse on a level of familiarity with him.

It may have been from this heart of familiarity with common man and the challenges that the modern person often faces that Cardinal Bergoglio commented on the plight of unwed mothers in Argentina. Less than a year ago, he made the following comments to his priests:

In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today’s hypocrites… Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptized!

Truly, the life movement can expect great things from a Holy Father who holds the unborn and their mothers so very close to his heart.