The First Since...Oh, The Last One?

So we have a new pope and all the media outlets are gushing about how it was 1000 years since the last non-European.  Who was that guy?  Where was he come from?  And what was going on 1000 years ago that this occurred?  I have no idea.  They just love passing on that piece of trivia without any of the context.  Now I know I can look all this up on the internet but why should I have to work out the ending of the story?  It wasn't me that started telling it.

It's just like how you hear about some athlete setting the 2nd fastest/highest/heaviest/most whatever in history.  They never tell you about the original.  Perhaps they just figure you're so parochial, you'll only want to know about "your guy" or the one from "your time". 

Meanwhile, if it's taken us a thousand years to elect a pope from outside Europe, perhaps those medieval types weren't as unprogressive as we like to think they were and perhaps we should be less obsessed with "our time".