Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, known for simplicity and conservatism VATICAN CITY - The man who will move into the 10-room papal residence inside the vaulted gates of the Holy See lives in a simple, austere apartment across from the Cathedral of Buenos Aires. In a city with a taste for luxury and status, he frequently prepares his own meals and abandoned the limousine of his high office to hop on el micro - Argentine slang for the bus. A staunch conservative and devout Jesuit in Latin America's most socially progressive nation, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is the product of an almost Solomon-esque choice by the princes of the church. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina has been elected the new pope. So, who is the man chosen to lead the world's Catholics? The 76-year-old hails from a country and a continent where the once powerful voice of the church is increasingly falling flat, losing ground - as it is in Europe -- to a tide of more permissive and pragmatic faiths and to fast-rising secularism. He gives voice to a church whose center of global gravity is shifting increasing south. But the first Latin American pope also represents a cultural bridge between two worlds -- the son of Italian immigrants in a country regarded by some as the New World colony Italy never had. For many Italians, his heritage makes him the next best thing to the return of an Italian pope. Bergoglio remains a fierce critic of socially progressive trends including gay marriage, representing a continuity of Benedict XVI's conservative doctrine. Though questioned for some of his actions during Argentina's Dirty War, he may also be a target hard for progressives to hit. In recent decades, he has emerged as a champion of social justice and the poor who spoke out against the evils of globalization and has slammed the "demonic effects of the imperialism of money." His papal name honors St. Francis of Assisi, the son of wealthy merchants who abandoned all for a life of poverty in the path of Jesus Christ. At the same time, in the age of 24-hour news cycles and the cult of celebrity excess, he is described by some as so retro as to be something oddly new. He represents a flashback to an old-school view of the Catholic leaders as humble, soft-spoken clerics who walked among their flock and led by example - albeit also one who has used the Internet as a tool to reach lapsed Catholics. He knows how to take a municipal bus. When he became a local ordinary of Buenos Aires, he moved from a large impressive home to a modest dwelling. He has a sense of social justice, but he can be seen as quite conservative doctrinally," said the Rev. Robert Pelton, CSC, the director of Latin American Church Concerns at the University of Notre Dame. "He's a simple person," Pelton said. The fact is that he has a straightforwardness and simplicity that is quite unusual in public figures of our time. It remains unclear whether even Latin Americans will respond with newfound energy to Bergoglio's ascension to the throne of St. Peter. Among many of its neighbors, Argentina is seen as a nation apart - a country that fancies itself more European than Latin American, with many likely to see the rise of an Italian-Argentine as largely unrepresentative of the region as a whole.