In the fifth of his meditations for Lent – and on the third anniversary of the election of Pope Francis – Leo Cushley, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, recalls how he discovered the identity of the new pontiff

I  was in my office in the Secretariat of State at the Vatican when the white smoke arose from the Sistine Chapel. My colleagues and I raced to a terraced roof that overlooks St Peter’s Square. After 45 minutes, the new Pope emerged but he was too far away to see who he was and the speakers next to us had been switched off. So I had to text my sister in Scotland to ask who the new man in white was. Very quickly she replied: “It’s Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. He’s from Argentina. He’s going to take the name of Francis.”

 Even if the communication wasn’t clear on day one, three years on it’s very apparent what the dominant theme of this pontificate is going to be: mercy.