The Pope is gone

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rokapoke

Guest
It'll affect me in a few weeks, I suppose. I'm mid-conversion.
 

TomB

Administrator
Staff member
I'm catholic, and I've never really noticed any difference whomever is the pope...:)
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
I heard that there were Popeheads following him around, drinking wine and dropping wafers.
They even have bootleg recording of his masses.
 
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DarthFerret

Guest
Not I, I be non-denominational. Although it seems like its own denomination lately.
 
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CanadianBrad

Guest
As I don't really practice any faith, the Pope is just something that I see on television every now and then. I suppose if he were to visit my area, I might go get a picture, just to say that I saw the Pope. But I really find it interesting that an Argentinian pope is raised(and I think that's great, that it's not another Polish/Italian/German), and the Argentinian government immediately asks him to use his sway to weigh in on the Falkland Islands issue, when 99.9% of the country voted in a referendum two weeks earlier and declared they were satisfied remaining under British control.

As soon as you move against the opinion of the people that live there, I think you're in the wrong as a politician, and I'd call it equally as bad when you try and use a religious figurehead as a weapon to do so.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
and I think that's great, that it's not another Polish/Italian/German)
I think I heard he was the first one from South America, which would make sense. It's not like they had a bunch of German/Polish/Italians before. The guy before him was German and the guy before that was Polish, most of the rest were Italian, with other nationalities coming up occasionally. Granted, Italy as a single entity didn't exist for a lot of that history, so their national origins at the time would have been like "the kingdom of Venice" or whatever. One of my Catholic friends said thinks they won't have another Italian pope for a long time as some way of making up for having the vast majority of them be Italian for so long, but he could be full of crap about that. I have no idea.
 
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CanadianBrad

Guest
Considering how overwhelmingly Catholic South America is, it seems to me that they should be spewing popes. When Jean-Paul(or was it John-Paul?) died, prior to Pope Benedict(who we've just replaced) I said then that the next Pope should be from South America, based solely on how big the Catholic faith is down there, and how they get relatively little recognition for it.
 

turgy22

Nothing Special
The first pope was of Middle-Eastern descent and I thought he did a pretty good job. I was kind of hoping the next one would come from that area, so the church could get back to its roots.

The pope before Benedict XIV was John Paul II.
 
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CanadianBrad

Guest
Not a lot of dioceses there to recruit from, though.
Fair enough. I can't claim that I'm knowledgeable enough about the politics of the Catholic faith to debate it. To me, it's just one of those simple issues: There's a TON of Catholics from this particular region, so it stands to reason(to me, anyway) that we should be seeing a larger proportion of church officials coming from there than from certain other regions.

I can't say that it makes a huge difference to me anyway, not being Catholic and all. Just kind of one of those things my mind decides on while it's idle.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
That comment was about the Middle East, not South America. Turgy pointed out that Peter, officially the first pope, was from the Middle East. Catholicism is a lot more prominent in South America than in the Middle East.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Pope Francis was the first runner up from the election before this one, so it doesn't seem to be a surprise that he won this one.
 
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CanadianBrad

Guest
I just remember reading about the Canadian cardinal that was in the running, fairly high up the list. I figured Wayne Gretzky was pretty close to sainthood if we had a Canadian Pope.
 
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