Just my personal opinion here: If you listened to the secular media in the time before the conclave, the choices for the Papacy were exclusively binary: we either would get a hip, young, politically liberal, abortion/female-ordination/contraception-loving pope, or an old, theologically conservative, woman/gay/poor-hating pope. That’s it, the media only gave the conclave two options.
The Holy Spirit, thankfully, does not listen to media commentators’ theology. Instead, I think He gave us just what the Church needs most in these times, when we divide ourselves by theology, by class, by race, by politics, and a hundred other divisions thought up by Our Ancient Enemy. We got something else entirely, to the shock and surprise and discombobulation of the media.
We got a Christocentric Pope.
As the popular meme says, Well played, Holy Spirit. Well played.
The only person who can unite us, both within the Church and out, is Christ. The more the current Pope conforms himself to Christ’s example - in his love of the sacraments, in his concern for the poor and downtrodden, in his desire to follow God’s Law - the more unifying he will be, urbi et orbi. All our recent Popes have been Christocentric - I love John Paul II, and I love Benedict, both of whom provided the leadership and the example their times required, but I think our new Pope will provide a new example for a new era of how we can lead a radically Christ-centered life. I think the example Pope Francis gives us will be quite a surprise to the modern culture.