The year 2013 could have produced a number of stunners for Time’s Person of the Year honor.

You had Edward Snowden, the former NSA leaker who’s now in Russia and hiding from U.S. prosecutors for leaking highly classified information. Snowden’s mischief changed the course of national security debate in America this year.

You also had Ted Cruz, the fiery freshman Republican senator from Texas who went to Washington promising, in effect, to shut down the process of governing. Has he sponsored any key legislation? No. But in keeping with my vow of Christmas kindness, I’ll refrain from any direct criticism until after the holiday.

Those are just two examples of individuals who changed the trajectory “for better or worse.” Hey, the magazine has named Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and the Ayatollah Khomeini as its people of the year, for crying out loud.

Instead, the magazine went with Pope Francis I.

Great choice, given the context of his ascendancy.

Francis is the first pontiff to succeed a living predecessor in more than four centuries. He not only succeeded Benedict XVI, he has supplanted Benedict’s strict enforcement of Vatican policy with a much kinder, gentler approach to pastoring to the masses.

He’s taken the church to task for not doing enough to care for the poor; he has criticized capitalism as being too beneficial to rich people while continuing to ignore the plight of others; Francis has spoken out aggressively about how the church must cope with the child abuse scandal among Catholic clergy.

Francis lives in humble quarters, rides around in a humble car and has eschewed many of the trapping used by the earthly leader of the Catholic Church.

Francis has done all this while washing the feet of the poor, embracing — quite literally — the disfigured and the maimed among his flock.

He has brought humanity back into style as the leader of one of the world’s great Christian denominations.

Pope Francis I is the Person of the Year … without a doubt.