BUENOS AIRES — When the French cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran uttered the name “Bergoglio” in the middle of his Latin habemus papam announcement, I thought I had misheard. I wasn’t the only one in Argentina to think that. News anchors on the local cable channel went silent. The disbelief cleared only when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s: An Argentine had just become pope.  Drivers in Buenos Aires began honking; screams could be heard from balconies. It was as though Argentina had just scored a goal in the World Cup. Crowds flocked to the cathedral, shouting and clapping in celebration at the unexpected news. This is a country, after all, where more than three-quarters of the population identify themselves as Catholic but where few people attend church every week.  Not so on Wednesday. Outside the cathedral at 11 p.m., a priest told me that his church in the Flores neighborhood was fuller than during his busiest Sunday Mass. “I saw lots of new faces,” he said with a smile. The most famous Argentine in the world today is not a football star.  The government, however, seemed to be at a loss. Allies of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the lower house of Congress refused to interrupt a tribute to Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan president, to mark the historic occasion. During a speech later Wednesday during which she tepidly wished Bergoglio well, her supporters jeered her with whistling.  This reticence illustrates the tense, adversarial relationship Bergoglio has had with Kirchner and her late husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner.  Some Kirchner supporters have accused Bergoglio, like much of the Church in Argentina, of complicity in the bloody military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983. Néstor Kirchner once called the cardinal “the true representative of the opposition.”  Bergoglio, for his part, often issued thinly veiled criticism of the government, noting its lack of interest in the poor, rampant corruption, distorted inflation figures and a penchant for confrontation instead of dialogue. Bergoglio’s relationship with Cristina Kirchner soured further in 2010, after she pushed a gay-marriage bill through Parliament. He described it as “the devil’s handiwork.”  And now the 76-year-old archbishop whom Cristina Kirchner was so eager to see retire from public life is the new leader of the Catholic world.  The media were more enthusiastic about Bergoglio, who is known more as a populist pastor than a high-minded dogmatist. They praised his abstemiousness: He takes public transportation! He lives in a modest apartment! He cooks his own meals!  The election of Pope Francis confirms what we always suspected  The new pope’s austerity extends to his professional life, a characteristic that could help him put some order in a Vatican that by all accounts is in disarray, especially financially. Bergoglio is also no stranger to such troubles, having played a key role in brokering political and social dialogue after Argentina’s economy collapsed and the country descended into chaos in 2001-2002.  Defying the Kirchners in Buenos Aires isn’t the same thing as standing up to the Vatican’s bureaucracy. But at least Bergoglio has ruffled a few feathers before.  Daniel Politi is a freelance writer living in Argentina.
Bergoglio&#8217;s tense relations with the Argentine government suggest the new pope may be unafraid to ruffle a few feathers in the Vatican.