Pope
Election, death and resignation
citation needed] For centuries, from 1378 on, those elected to the papacy were predominantly Italians. Prior to the election of the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978, the last non-Italian was Pope Adrian VI of the Netherlands, elected in 1522. John Paul II was followed by election of the German-born Pope Benedict XVI, who was in turn followed by Argentine-born Pope Francis, who is the first non-European after 1272 years and the first Latin American, despite having an Italian ancestry.
Pope-51