Nine months after he was elected to the Catholic church’s highest role, Pope Francis has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2013 -- and by default, one of the most important media personas of the year. Francis, who is the church's 266th pope, is Time's 86th person of the year, although some of them technically weren't persons (one was a computer, another was “you”). He is only the third pope ever to be named person of the year (Pope John XXIII was named in 1962, and Pope John Paul II was named in 1994).

In a study of contrasts, Time announced the other contenders for 2013 Person of the Year were:

* Miley Cyrus, Singer

* Bashar Assad, President of Syria

* Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker

* Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder

* Ted Cruz, Texas Senator

* Barack Obama, President of the United States

* Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran

* Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

* Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist

"Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly,” explains Time Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs about the magazine's selection of the pontiff. “Young and old, faithful and cynical—as has Pope Francis. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power…. He is embracing complexity and acknowledging the risk that a church obsessed with its own rights and righteousness could inflict more wounds than it heals…. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world's largest church to confronting its deepest needs, and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is Time's 2013 Person of the Year."