I watched history being made 5,067.5 miles away while I rode the bus home from school Wednesday afternoon. White smoke poured out of the chimney from the Sistine Chapel indicating that College of Cardinals had just elected the 266th Bishop of Rome in Vatican City, and I saw it unfold from a live stream on my iPhone.

It was from my seat on a yellow school bus that I watched the new pontiff, in Italian, address the screaming crowds gathered outside in St. Peter’s Square.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who will be called Pope Francis, was a cardinal from Argentina and the archbishop of Buenos Aires. He makes history as the first pope to be elected from the Americas and as the first non-European in more than 1,200 years.

Although Rome is five hours ahead and halfway around the world, I was able to watch Bergoglio give his first blessing as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church at the same time the thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square did

Some worry that all this new technology is a distraction from kids learning, but I think that we all need to remember the basic idea behind the technology we carry in our pockets is to be able to connect to a global community, day or night, and experience history whenever and wherever it happens.

Viva la papa. Viva technology.
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