I’m a bit of a lapsed Catholic.

By the end of this post, you’ll realize how lapsed.

The pope died recently. It happens. In fact, it’s happened to all of them.

I wasn’t sure of the veracity of that last statement on the morning Francis died. The previous pope had retired, an act that, for a span of two-thousand years or so, didn’t seem possible? When Benedict stepped down, I think the entire world, and probably half of humanity in the afterlife, said, “Wait, he can do that?”

To which, he replied in his best Cliff Clavin, “Well, actually, it’s pretty obvious that the pope can do whatever the heck he wants because, you see, he’s the pope.”

Pope Benedict played Cliff Clavin, right? Or am I confusing my Joe Ratzinger and my John Ratzenberger?

Unfortunately, Benedict died on the last day of 2022. It didn’t make as much news as if he had died while in office, like a proper pontiff. Too bad. If he was still alive I’d be rooting for a Grover Cleveland-esque return to the throne, er, the See. 

I was going to say a “Return from the Dead,” but that’s a bit too on the nose with Francis dying so close to Easter. It was reported early on Easter Monday. Did he actually wait until Monday or did they just think it would be gauche to announce it on Easter. Regardless, I live in California, which is nine or ten hours behind Italy, so I’m claiming he went on Easter. He’s from Argentina, afer all, which is closer to my time zone than Rome.

Still, dying on Easter ain’t a bad way to go for a pope. Better than dying on Good Friday. Then we’d all have been real nervous come Easter Sunday, wouldn’t we?

Do you hear thunder where you are? No? Just me?

As popes go, I kinda like Francis. His general demeanor of accepting people’s humanity was a refreshing break from, well, every pope before him. Jesus might be all about forgiveness and acceptance, but the Catholic Church (and, honestly, pretty much every established Christian church) seems to have missed that memo. Turn the other cheek. Love your enemies. Don’t criticize the speck in your brother’s eye while ignoring the plank in your own eye?

Heck, the whole purpose of going to church is so that you can be an asshole to people the other six days of the week. And Sunday afternoon, too.

No wonder they avoided letting people read the bible for 1500 years. 

Pope Francis bucked that trend for a while. Maybe they noticed people like me stopped attending and wanted to bring us back. I didn’t go back, but I briefly contemplated it. Unfortunately, he came along right around the time I had a kid, and I didn’t want to repeat the process of indoctrinating her into an organization that will spend her formative years telling her she’s a  terrible sinner.

However, I did stop taking communion after Pope Francis took over. My family is still Catholic, so every wedding and funeral and half the school graduations included Catholic mass. After I stopped thinking of myself as Catholic, I still took communion. Since I didn’t believe in the magic cracker anymore, not that I ever really did, I figured what did it matter. And even though Jesus told us not to pray in public to be noticed by others, I had to keep up appearances with my family. 

Besides, if we listened to Jesus and didn’t pray for the purpose of being noticed by others, organized religion would cease to exist. 

But with Pope Francis in charge, I came to accect our differences. You know what? If y’all respect that our pets mean a lot to us, then I can respect the body and blood of Christ mean a lot to you. See how easy that was?

Unfortunately, knowing the history of the Catholic Church (and, interestingly, the Romanov dynasty), reformers are usually succeeded by repressors. So welcome back to masses being conducted in Latin. If the new guy picks the name Pope Revelationus, run for the hills.

I’m always fascinated by pope names. It’s not very many people who get to pick a new name, much less the name he’ll be known for throughout history, at the age of seventy. I’m surprised there aren’t more Pope Maximuses or Pope KickAssimus or Pope GetOffMyLawnYouSnotNosedLittleShits. Sure, plenty of popes take on that spirit, but not the name.

Pope Francis was the first one from South America. I kinda assumed the first Latin American pope with go with Jesus. Then the question would be if he’s Pope Jesus the first or the second. 

There was a similar worry with King Charles. When he was younger, he didn’t want to take the name Charles III, primarily because Charles I had been executed and Charles II died just before he probably would’ve been kicked out of the country.  

Unlike popes, kings can only take one if their given names, so Charles could only choose from the names Charles, PhilIIp, George, or Arthur. You catch that last one? The heir usually has Arthur as one of their names as a nod to the mythical king with the obvious caveat that you’re not supposed to pick it as your actual king name. But if you know anything about Prince Charles when he was in his twenties and thirties, you might know that appeals to common decency weren’t his forte. Many a Brit fretted through the 1980s and 1990s that they might have to quibble over whether he should be King Arthur I or King Arthur II.

Fortunately Queen Elizabeth II lasted long enough that Charles was in old by the time he had to pick his king name. When the whole world has known you as Charles for seventy years, they’re gonna keep calling you Charles, regardless of what you tell them. The best he could hope for in a rebrand was Chaz, but that would required an earring and an obvious hair dye. 

Popes don’t have the issue of being saddled with the name everybody’s known them by their whole life. Sure, someone you know has recently googled Cardinals Parolin and Turkson and are pretending to be all scholarly about it. But for most of us, the first time we’ll hear about the new pope, he’ll already have his new name. He could take the name Pope Pizza and that’s three only name everyone would ever know him by. 

One of the guys in the running, BTW, is Cardinal Pizzaballa, so he wouldn’t be far off.

Yet with all that freedom, most popes stick to the boring old tried and true. I mean,  23 Johns? Sixteen Benedicts. They’ve had thirteen Piuses! Pious is an adjective, not a name. We’ll have a Pope Hungry before we have a Pope Fred.  

I know, it’s weird that septuagenarians who devoted their entire lives to study and celibacy don’t have the same sense of humor as me. I’d personally go with Pope Cockburn.

The other adjective names seem to have fallen out of favor in recent centuries. Urban used to be a pretty popular name. There were eight of them. But the last one was in the 1600s. Kinda makes sense, since the whole world is urban now. Maybe at the time, people were like,  “Ooo, this pope is so urban. So urbane! Not like all us numbnut peasants. 

There’s never been a Pope Rural, though. Maybe now’s the time. Nothing would tie back to the simplistic origins of the Church better than Rural. Or maybe Bucolic if you tryna be fancy. 

Popes who named themselves Innocent are trying too hard. Nobody who is that innocent survives the politicking involved in working your way to the top.  I guess Innocent rolls off the tongue better than Pope Nah Nah That Archbishop Already Had A Shiv Through His Eye When I Got Here. 

We’re probably still another twenty years away from a Britney Spears fan ascending to the seat as Pope Not That Innocent. 

Martin used to be a pretty common name for popes. There were five of them. But, shockingly, none since 1517, when a certain Martin posted a certain list of Theses. Sure, Catholics will tell you they’re over that whole Protestant Reformation thing, but the names of their popes might disagree. 

Another name that only made it to five was Sixtus. Pope Sixtus the Fifth reigned from 1585-1590. And then no other Sixtuses. How has no pope wanted to become Sixtus the Sixth?  And then do you know what I heard? I heard the Pope Sixtus the Seventh ate nine… um… tents?

And why no Bonifaces since Boniface IX died in 1404? I know it was during the Schism, but we’re past that, right? Well, whatever pope name is chosen this time, I should still be able to bust out my “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Boniface” bumper sticker.

But if the pope has recently died, then you know what it’s time for? The Pope Pool! #Degenerate!

Turns out you can bet on the next pope in Europe, but not America. I find it hard to believe that Draft Kings and Fan Duel can run ads about how much blood will gush forth from the seventeenth place finisher in the Boston Marathon’s nipples, but not on the next spiratual leader of 1.4 billion people. Get on it, Nevada. Casino buffets are long gone and I now have to pay to park at Lake Tahoe. I keep hearing the same excuse for both changes. People just don’t gamble anymore. They go to Tahoe and Vegas to dance and drink and party. Well, maybe if you give them worthwhile shit to bet on, they’ll gamble more.

Over/under is 1.8 fluid ounces of nipple blood, by the way. 

So with sportsbooks not taking action on the next pope, we’re stuck with ye olde office pool. Pick a square, any square, and I’ll tell ya what you’re rooting for. I mean, who the hell knows if the Archbishop of Khartoom can kick an extra point.

This is my third pope pool. I was only four years old when John Paul II took office, so I didn’t have enough teeth to properly chomp on a cigar like a proper bookmaker yet. 

The Brain Trust that devised our particular Pope Pool opted to gamble on three aspects of the new pope: His age, his nationality, and his pope name. Some other pools add the number of unsuccessful votes (black smoke) as a variable, but that requres way too much paying attention.

I gotta tell ya, making a Super Bowl-style squares pool ain’t easy when there are three variables. I think on our first go around, we literally printed out little pieces of paper with the items (ie. Italy, 71-74 years old, John, Paul, or John Paul) and you pulled them out of a hat. Not the easiest for tracking and doing the fun part, which is rooting for and against other people in the pool. Although regardless, the Pope Pool ain’t as much buy-in as a Super Bowl Pool, because we get no updates once the conclave starts. If you’re like me, you’ve watched many a football game pondering how many safeties are necessary to get to the score you need. If the cardinals really want us playing along at home, the black smoke should form into cryptic messages like “An African who would’ve become Pope Pius has been eliminated from contention.”

By 2013, we were a little more prepared. And nothing says prepared like a spreadsheet! The columns are geographical, while each row has two variables: age and names. The names are clumped together with three options each, so the sixty-foud squares are chunked into four 4×4 blocks, with each block sharing the same three names but being broken into age (row) and location (column). 

So four age ranges, four nationalities, four chunks of three names each equals out to 64 squares. Five bucks a square. Everybody who gets two out of the three items correct (there will be nine squares) gets $10. The remaining $210 goes to the person with the winning square. Nothing to the house. Better odds than Vegas!

How did I improve on it this time around? Well, this time around I actually did research. I don’t expect my bettors to do research, but it’s probably a good idea for me to try my best to make each of the four splits in each option to have a roughly 25% chance of hitting. Last time, I split the ages into 76 and up, 71-75, 66-70, and 65 & under. Somebody  mentioned that there were no eligible Italians under the age of 66. Oops.

So this time, I’ve actually pulled up the list of electors. Turns out about half of them are between the agest of 73-76. So this year, I’m splitting it into smaller groups, with the middle two being 73-77 and 69-72. 

I also tweaked the geography. Not because of the list of electors, but because of Francis. Last time, I paired Asia with Africa and then had North and South America as another option. Considering Francis was South American, the conventional wisdom is the next guy ain’t coming from this half of the world. Asia and Africa, however, each have a couple of hot prospects. So I’m pairing Africa with South America. The “Global South,” for those in the Social Justice Warrior sect. Then Asia, the Pacific Islands, and (ha ha, as if) North America will be a separate option. Then it’s just Italy or Europe outside of Italy. I threw the Middle East into that last group, because it’s probably the least likely, but some guy in Jeruselum is getting a little run.

And to think that, for what, 550 years or more, none of the options other that “Italy” would’ve been used. And in all honesty, I thought the “Other” option for pope name was going to be rarely used, but Francis was the first of his name. And John Paul I, too. So two of the last four popes went off the board. The last pope before John Paul I to take a new name, was around the year 1100, and those guys weren’t even official popes. The Pope Pool would’ve totally sucked pre-Vatican II.

I’ve recently randomized the squares, so here’s what I’m rooting for in this Conclave: A 73-77 year old non-Italian European who takes the name Benedict, John Paul, or Alexander. My daughter “bought” a square with the same three names, but she wants an Italian under the age of 69. Cardinal Pizzaballa would be a win for her. If he picks the right name.

So I’ll be monitoring the smoke with baited breath just like a lot of my fellow humans over the next couple week.

I’ll just be watching for a different reason.

***Addendum: Yes. The first choice I made in this Pope Pool was “There’s no way the new pope will come from North or South America. And look at that, I’m not changing it to make me look so prescient. If only more people didn’t try to hide the fact that they were wrong…***