The Time magazine today named Pope Francis –
“the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church” as its person of the year 2013 saying that In only his first year, he has changed the perception of the 2,000-year-old institution in an extraordinary way in a short time.
The TIME called him as “The People’s Pope.” “Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly — young and old, faithful and cynical — as Pope Francis,” Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs said in a paper statement.
Time has shortlisted 42 global leaders, entrepreneurs and celebrities for its ‘Person of the Year 2013’. BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was one among them. Along with modi, other contenders for Time’s 2013 Person of the Year are NSA leaker
Edward Snowden (he stood at 2nd place), gay rights activist Edith Windsor, singer Miley Cyrus, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. US Precident Obama won this honor for the year 2012.
What is this Times Person of the Year ? Yearly the Time magazine pics a person who had the greatest impact on the world, for good or bad, during the entire year and publishes an annual issue featuring that person. This tradtion was started in the year 1927. Earlier they used to call it as “Man of the Year”. In the year 1999 the title was changed to “Person of the year”.
Some Important Points to Note about Times Person of the Year (Males) :
Mahatma Gandhi featured as Times Person of the year for the year 1930. The Protester (representation of many global protest movements) featured as the Times person of the year in 2011 Facebook CEO Features as Times Person of the year 2010 Barack Obama featured fro 2008 and 2012 You (Represented by the individual content creator on the World Wide Web) featured for the year 2006
List of Time Person (Women): Featured as Times Person of the Year in 1936 – Wallis Simpson in 1937 – Soong May-ling in 1952 – Queen Elizabeth II in 1986 – Corazon Aquino in 1975 – American Women in 2002 – “The Whistleblowers” (Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins, in 2002) in 2005 – Melinda Gates.