Pope-ularity Contest*

*sorry.

Above: The faithful applaud the
announcement of Pope Xena I. 

In a stunning move, the Catholic Church has selected a half Black, half Asian, hearing impaired lesbian agnostic to be the 266th Pope. The choice heralds a new day for the once tradition-bound organization that claims over 1.2 billion members world wide. Shortly after greeting the crowd in Rome, the new Pope immediately announced plans to begin ordaining women priests, to allow same-sex couples equal marriage rights and to distribute free contraceptives in areas of the world that are suffering from the AIDS epidemic. Thus begins an era of progressiveness and inclusiveness...

Slow down there Amerigo Vespucci, are
you telling me there's a South America?

Ok, so none of that happened. The winner of the Vatican Hunger Games is Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio and he's from Argentina and assuming there're no surprises, is a dude. Being from Argentina however does mean there are some firsts here. He's the first Pope from the Americas and the first from the southern hemisphere. He's also the first non-European Pope in twelve hundred years...well, non-European in the sense that Argentina isn't in Europe, although his parents were both from Italy, the country that produced like most of the Popes. But still, this is progress, right?

Pope Francis has even vowed to put the
Holy Bong of St. Cheech on Craigslist. 

Sort of. On the upside he's big on helping the poor, sticking up for workers and eschewing the opulence and trappings of position Catholic Cardinals are sort of famous for wallowing in. As the Cardinal of Buenos Aires he sold the Archdiocese's mansion and lived in an apartment and even cooked for himself like the rest of us slobs. And just to out-humble the shit out of his fellow Cardinals, he skipped the Papal limo and took the shuttle bus with the losers...which I imagine was actually a little awkward...

"Hey, no hard feelings. Oh and anytime you want to come
over and use the Papal pool just drop me a text. Anytime."

"¡Maldito los Homosexúales!"

-Argentinians fleeing God's 

wrath after legalizing gay marriage

But if you were hoping New Pope would be any better on gay rights than Pope Classic you're out of luck. While leading the charge against the legalization of gay marriage and gay adoption in Argentina he called same sex unions "a destructive attack on God's plan" and compared gay parents adopting children to a form of discrimination (don't think about it too hard, you'll only bleed from the ears). Oh, and in case you were wondering, Argentina went ahead and made same sex marriages legal anyway and to date has not been smited by the almighty, so I'm going to go ahead and suggest that infallibility is more of a tradition than a fact. 

So why the hell do I care? I mean, as a devout Vulcantologist, Pope Francis's election has 0% bearing on my life. Still, I guess it'd just be nice to see the Church come around and stop being dickish about gay people, women and birth control...I don't know, is that asking too much of an organization that took 500 years to forgive Galileo?

"Ok everybody, when I'm gone I want you to form a massive, international organization patterned after
the Roman Empire I spent my life railing against. Then, I want you to exclude women from all the decision making
 positions and use its wealth and influence to preach against the use of contraceptives and denounce gay people as godless aberrations. Got all that? Good. Now would somebody please take this kid? She is starting to smell."

-Jesus, Chapter Nowhere, verse 0:0 of the Bible