Pope Francis has been named Time's 'Person of the Year' Earthly reward... Pope Francis has been named Time's Person of the Year. Common touch... Pope Francis (R) caresses a sick person in Saint Peter's Square at the end of his General Audience in Vatican City on November 6. TIME magazine has named Pope Francis its person of the year, saying that in nine months in office the head of the Catholic Church had become a new voice of conscience "In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalisation, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power," the magazine said. At a time when the limits of leadership are being tested in so many places, along comes a man with no army or weapons, no kingdom beyond a tight fist of land in the middle of Rome but with the immense wealth and weight of history behind him, to throw down a challenge. more to come