Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, became the first Jesuit Pope when he was elected on March 13, 2013. In the time since his election, Pope Francis has made his mark on the modern church. As David Gibson notes, Pope Francis has called us “to reform ourselves in order to convert others.” From declaring a Year of Mercy, to writing Laudato Si, the encyclical on caring for the environment, Pope Francis is making his mark on the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis will be visiting Myanmar and Bangladesh beginning on Monday Nov. 28. He is the first pope to visit Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country of some 55 million people. Under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country’s top civilian leader, Myanmar has been the target of human rights groups who say the country is engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against some one million Rohingya migrants. How Francis addresses this issue will be closely watched. On Nov. 30, Pope Francis will fly to neighboring Bangladesh. Eighty-seven percent of its 156 million people are Muslim. Christians are a tiny minority of 600,000 believers, 350,000 of whom are Catholic.