Francis’ papacy honored Latin American Catholics killed for their social justice work, a theologian explains – and Leo may continue that legacy.

With Roman Catholic cardinals set to begin their secret conclave to elect a new pope, the legacy left behind by Pope Francis, the first pope from Latin America, may be tightly guarded by the region's cardinals hoping to again install one of their own,

It has long been an unwritten rule of the Catholic Church that no citizen of a world superpower can be pope. The informal logic is that such an arrangement would risk putting preeminent temporal and spiritual authority into the hands of the same clan.