2013 papal conclave 2013 papal conclave The papal conclave of 2013 was convened to elect a pope to succeed Pope Benedict XVI following his resignation on 28 February 2013. After the 115 participating cardinal-electors gathered, they set 12 March 2013 as the beginning of the conclave. On the fifth ballot, the conclave elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He took the pontifical name of "Francis". On 11 February 2013, Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the papacy effective 28 February 2013 at 20:00 local time (19:00 UTC). He was the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415,
Jorge Mario García Laguardia Jorge Mario García Laguardia Dr Jorge Mario García Laguardia is a Guatemalan jurist. He has been a tenured lecturer at several Guatemalan and foreign universities, including the Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala City, where he founded the School of Political Science, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and he has served the Guatemalan state in several juridical capacities. García Laguardia's academic work has focussed on three main areas: the history of public law, Latin American integration (particularly that of Central America), and constitutional law. He spent a number of years in exile during Guatemala's Civil War, lecturing and