Popefuls!

What's latin for "whomp whomp?"

It's a black smoke day institutional continuity fans, a black smoke day. Yup, no pope. Sede vacante. But that's evidently not a surprise, as according to my extensive research of some stuff I saw on Youtube, the first round of pope voting is usually taken up with the cardinals just voting for their colleagues as a sort of honorable mention. Tomorrow the real popularity contest begins. But did you know that anyone can be pope? Ok, not anyone, you have to be a baptized Catholic man, which is, bananas.

That's some chutzpah demanding tithes when
 you own a golden horse-drawn carriage.

There are nearly one point four billion Catholics in the--huh? No, I'm not. I'm more of a secular humanist agnostic? I don't know. Doens't matter. Although my parents were both raised Catholic, so I've inherited both a fascination with the Catholic Church as an organization, and the crushing guilt. I mean, it's basically a medieval holdover--the church, not the guilt--that one in six humans on Earth look to for spiritual guidance for the low, low price of a tenth of their income. Oh, and they can look to it for a new job. Half of them anyway.

It also took them a couple centuries to
admit that Gallileo was on to something.

Which brings me back to the thing I found bananas: the idea that half of the 1.4 billion adherents are, technically eligible to don the pointiest of hats. I say technically because the college of cardinals hasn't looked outside their weird old guys in robes club for over five hundred years. Still though, the fact that any rando as long as he's a man and got dunked in a font as an infant can shoot all the way to the top, but a woman can't be a priest is, well, it's actually pretty on brand for pretty much any job, isn't it?

He would spontaneously
combust. Like, burst into flames.

If you're anything like me, you're interested, but not invested. What I'm sure is a time of heightened emotions for hundreds of millions of people around the world is, for us, a welcome distraction from having to think about that clown sitting in the White Ho--oh, and did you see that picture he tweeted? Of him dressed up as the pope? Ugn, even when it's not about him, he makes it about him. Obviously they'd never pick him. First, he's not a Catholic. Second, he's you know, a fundamentally terrible person. That's not to say all popes have been saints. Well, ok, a lot of them ended up as literal saints, but John XII had an incestuous relationship with his own neice. Alexander VI was famous for nepotism, philandering, and corruption. And Leo X sold indulgences, which are basically pardons--dang, he might fit right in.

Anyway, enough about him. Now is the time to stream Conclave with Ralph Finnes, check the AP for updates and not think about the goon or his dumb pleas for attention, or how he nodded off at the last Pope's funeral or--damint! He's doing it again.

Conclave means "with key" referring to how the cardinals lock themselves up to choose the
next pope in total secrecy. This means they could be doing anything in there. Literally anything.
They could flip a coin and spend the next few days catching up on Andor for all we know.