Daily Headlines: December 12, 2013

* Vatican: On the same day that Argentine-born Pope Francis was selected as Time magazine’s Person of the Year a new poll found that 92% of Catholics in the U.S. support the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

* Mexico: The lower house of the Mexican congress approved a controversial energy reform bill that would help break up the country’s 75-year oil monopoly.

* Honduras: The Honduran electoral tribunal confirmed the victory of ruling party candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez in the presidential elections though it remains to be seen if his “law-and-order platform” can stem the tide of high violence and massive poverty.

* Chile: Educational reform, economic inequality and gay marriage were among the issues discussed by Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei during the final televised debate before Chile’s presidential election on Sunday.

Video Source – YouTube use NTDTV (During his visit to Brazil last July, Pope Francis “issued the first social manifesto of his young pontificate, telling slum dwellers that the world's rich must do much more to wipe out vast inequalities between the haves and the have-nots”.)

Online Sources- Pew Research Center; FRANCE24; Prensa Latina; Bloomberg