After the announcement that the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church will be someone from Latin America, San Diego Latino Catholics reacted with enthusiasm that the new pope, for the first time in history, will be a man whose mother tongue is Spanish.

This week, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, was selected to lead the world’s more than one billion Catholics, with almost 40 percent of them hailing from Latin America.

After this news, Latino Catholics in San Diego rejoiced.

“I cried of the emotion,” said Laura Martinez, outside of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in San Ysidro. “You could tell he is Latino, because he was funny, warm, and always smiling. It is a great hope, a great honor, that we will have a strong voice in the Church.”

Santiago Lopez, a parishioner at St. Rose of Lima Church, in Downtown Chula Vista, said that he hopes that Pope Francis will help the Church attract the millions of Catholics who have left the faith in recent decades.

“Hopefully if they see someone who speaks like them, who is one of them, and someone who is humble, they will reconsider their decision to leave Catholicism and will return home,” Lopez said. “We, as Catholics, have to be united, to help our Church fix all of its problems.”

Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina. The fact that he is the son of a hard-working family who immigrated to a new land looking for a better future, might resonate with the millions of Latino Catholics in the United States.

“The pope shares a lot of our history, of our struggles,” said Luis Alfonso Guzman outside of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, in San Ysidro. “He’s the son of immigrants, and he was able to succeed, to find a career, to accomplish his parents’ dream. He makes us so proud. I can relate.”

Rodrigo Valdivia, director of the office of Cultural Diversity and chancellor of the Diocese of San Diego, said that Pope Francis is an inspiration for Latinos.

“I think that the whole world breaths to know who is our new universal pastor,” he said. “We Latin Americans of course are even happier that one of our own has received this post of such importance and responsibility. For all of the Latino people this selection is an inspiration and support to our faith.”

San Diego Bishop Robert Brom said in a statement that “we look to Pope Francis to be a humble instrument of unity and peace in the Church and in the world. We pray that he will be led by the Spirit of Jesus to champion a new evangelization in order to place God at the center of all human life and cultures.

“We pray that he will address the problems in the Church and in the world by promoting those values and practices which, true to St. Francis of Assisi, will bring about a civilization of love.”

About one third of San Diego Catholics are Latino, according to the diocese.