The pope is dead

The pope is having breathing problems (a tube down his throat, apparatively), which would interfere with the administration of a certain herbal palliative. But he is also on a feeding tube, so other...treatments could be administered that way.

that made snot come out my nose. well done.

I had that stuck in my head out of nowhere the other day!

http://ox.eicat.ca/~scarruthers/ilx/pope-dan.jpg

Apparently, according to every news network, this is 1/10000000 th as important as Terri Schiavo kicking the bucket.

Not trying to stir shit, just curious.

And leaving the devil's service is never easy.

Yes and no. The point you're going for here (reverse racism, 'oh, it's OK to make fun of white/European religious leaders') is a non-starter, I think.

Fewer westerners are familiar with big-time leaders of Islam or Hinduism, so you're not going to be bombarded with it 24/7 and there will be fewer jokes (most Terri Schiavo/Pope jokes are driven by the constant and frustrating media barrage). And more than a few westerners would dance with glee at the news of any Islamic religious leader in pain.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/30/international/gay.xlaerge1.jpg

thx

All that cheesy homophobia, hasn't lasted well.

x-post

In the slave girl, outfit, natch.

The humanity towards migrants and the unforlding horrors in Gaza was really notable. You can count on one hand leaders of any Western nation that will give a shit and show any kind of leadership when it counted.

I remember when Francis became Pope and his first official visit outside of Rome was to Lampedusa to pray for migrants who had died / been killed at sea. It meant so much to me, especially as the world embraced that kind of cruelty as the way forward. pic.twitter.com/yqEibs0YpX

— Zito (@_Zeets) April 21, 2025

Adult Catholic converts I would go to say are uniquely fucking weird and awful

I think you can add Russell Brand to that crew, no?

Perhaps the ritual, the choirs, the cathedrals, the incense can be kept

oh fuck yes

Re-posting the Tóibín essay for the background on Bergoglio: : https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/colm-toibin/the-bergoglio-smile

do they have much sway over the Vatican?

the Church is in some ways like a political party - there are factions. there's plenty of cardinals who'd prefer a more conservative Church. however, the nutball stuff that Bannon/Poso/fringe ppl you've never heard of want -- Mass in Latin, kneeling to receive the Host/no standing Communion or placing the Host on the hand, women to cover their heads in church per Paul's edit -- is massively unpopular, and most cardinals aren't interested in a program that will cull attendance and attract annoying converts, who tend to start telling the cardinals how to do their jobs as soon as they're confirmed (Vance is one of these). Bannon understands this as a battle like the battles that took place all the time in earlier centuries -- outside factions vying for the mantle of the Church, which is still mighty. but nobody outside the Vatican really has a full view of the Vatican's workings, I think; it's a very old organization that resents outside interference. so there are probably cardinals who support the Bannon/neotrad program. But Popes make cardinals, and Francis made 163 new cardinals from 76 countries, twenty-five of which had never had a cardinal before. This kind of math is catnip to Bannon, he wants action, intrigue, etc.

This piece in the Independent goes over the morning line on this. I don't have a sense of where, in the world, the Church is growing fastest, and where it's waning most, which are things the college of cardinals will be thinking about when they vote. Of the leading candidates, three are quite conservative and would appeal to the (editorializing here) fake-ass Catholics whose main interest is in shoring up votes & donations from U.S. parishes, and in notching a win by infiltrating one of the most powerful institutions in history.

Francis was the first Jesuit pope, and maybe the last

If Jesuits ran the world we wouldn't need a paradise in the afterlife.

lol those cardinals stepped right out of Conclave.

Cardinal Erdo is probably the worst possible outcome. For me Cardinal Tagle feels like both the person who most appeals to my hopes for the Church, and the one who has the best chance of increasing its reach. Cardinal Burke would be a disaster but if I were in Las Vegas I'd bet against any American ever getting it, the American Church does not get popes. If it's drama you want pray for Cardinal Scola. I like the notion of Cardinal Nichols as an outsider but I really don't think it's gonna happen.

women to cover their heads in church per Paul's edit

I've heard this referred to as 'Jackie O. cosplay'

Cardinal Sclerotic.

I've heard this referred to as 'Jackie O. cosplay'

loool

I remember when they busted out the sede vacante coat of arms on the official Vatican homepage last time around and they're on it again:

https://www.vatican.va/etc/designs/vatican/library/clientlibs/themes/homepage_sedesvacans/images/sedes-vacans.png

hammer don't hurt 'em : https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hammer-time/

this was a good and evenhanded reckoning, I thought:

Francis hoped his leadership might augur an age of renewal for the Church. He presided instead over an era of decline. Over his time in office, the secular West grew ever more secular. In Latin America, the Catholic Church’s long retreat before evangelical Protestantism turned into a rout. In 2010, nearly four out of every five of the Pope’s fellow Argentinians identified as Catholic; by 2020, that figure had dropped below 50 per cent. The future of Catholicism now looks like her distant past, the Church of the third century: strong in Africa, weak almost everywhere else. Francis did not instigate the decline; his papacy was defined by it nevertheless.

And as Francis subverted the hopes of others, history subverted his. The Pope called Catholics to go to the margins just as believers were, across much of the West, marginalised themselves; he strengthened ties with Christians outside the Church as her internal divisions deepened; and he expounded an optimistic, missionary vision of the Church to a shrinking, embattled flock. Hannah Arendt eulogised John XXIII as a pope who was also a Christian. Francis was, at his best, an even stranger prodigy: a pope who was also a human being. But whether this was a good thing depended on who you asked.

Good read, donna, thanks.

Judging by the comments, I'm not the only one who got the news through this IG post.

Me (joking on Twitter): Vance killed the Pope????
GOP congresswoman: VANCE KILLED THE POPE!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️ https://t.co/2Hxe4uCalJ

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) April 21, 2025

Jesus, what a fucking psycho.

not only did he die, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pope-francis-funeral-president-trump-and-melania-will-attend/ar-AA1Dld3F

ummm, were they invited?

From ye Post on potential successors

Bo of Myanmar, Tagle of the Philippines and Italians Pizzaballa and Parolin.

I haven't read the article but I can already tell you I'm on Team Pizzaballa

can't say that without sounding like Mario Brothers

An interesting Bluesky thread that I'm just gonna quote at length:

listen. God works in mysterious ways or whatever but it is hard to describe how spectacularly unpopular the highly conservative U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops has made itself with the rest of church leadership. the Vatican sees them as WAY too enmeshed in GOP politics and Francis legit hated them

you could fill a whole book with just "public statements by Pope Francis that purport to be about general Catholic teachings or beliefs but are in fact an incredibly specific and direct subtweet of something ONLY the American clergy are doing"

my Twitter friend Don Clemmer is a progressive Catholic journalist who follows the College of Cardinals like we follow the Senate, and over the years he's said a number of things to me that I found extremely hopeful and encouraging, and I'm sharing them here because maybe you will also

progressive Catholics have been worried for a LONG time about what happens next, and how much power the far right will have to roll back every advance Francis made, everywhere from reforming the Vatican Bank to bringing women and LGBTQ people into the synodal process for the first time in history

Don pointed out that Francis walked in the door absolutely knowing they were going to try that shit the second he died, and spent his entire tenure stacking the deck to reduce the mathematical possibility of that by filling the College of Cardinals with as many progressive voices as he could find

the College of Cardinals isn't the Senate; there's no limit on how many there can be. he's created new ones from 25 countries that never had representation at that level before. 80% of the 135 eligible cardinals to vote were hired by him and only 40% are from Europe. the makeup has really shifted

Don also pointed out that many of the cardinals Francis appointed and many of the Vatican leadership staff he hired actually have track records of being more progressive on various issues than he was. In many cases, he replaced a long-entrenched archconservative with someone way further left

once, many years ago, when I was expressing frustration to Don about Francis not going far enough on LGBTQ rights, he suggested we might look back one day and see him as a midpoint, not an endpoint:

"Maybe Francis isn't The Guy. Maybe he's the guy who opens the door for The Guy."

I find it helpful, in many ways, to look at Francis the way we look back at the iconic second wave feminists

the work they did was an absolutely vital uphill push and we wouldn't be where we are now without them. they were also not equipped to carry us all the way to the finish line

I think it's also important to acknowledge that the impact of a leader isn't just about who they are as an individual - necessarily flawed and imperfect, as we all are - but about how they prompt changed behavior from their followers. as a queer Catholic, that's the legacy of Pope Francis to me

I simply cannot describe to anyone who did not live it day to day how different it felt going to Mass as a queer person during Benedict's tenure than it did under Francis, even when Francis fucked up. the real seismic shift was that progressive Catholics felt empowered to be louder and braver

people who all along had been supportive of LGBTQ people and wanted them to be part of their faith community suddenly felt like they had their Pope's backing to create public forms of advocacy - queer liturgies, queer welcoming committees, queer speakers - instead of having to keep it quiet

the odds are mathematically pretty good that the successor of Pope Francis will be someone he chose because they shared his beliefs, and that makes an Obama-to-Trump backlash election feel less likely; but if it does happen, I think there is a real possibility of some schism-adjacent shit going down

guys if you are not familiar with the history between [Raymond] Burke and Pope Francis, please just know they were MORTAL ENEMIES, firing Burke was like the first thing Francis did walking in the door, and Burke often called Francis an illegitimate pope. no one who was hired by Francis would vote for that guy

so he did what Biden should have done with the Supreme Court

re: the NYT article, I like what I have read about Matteo Zuppi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/world/europe/next-pope-francis-candidates.html

"In 2015, Francis named him archbishop of Bologna, one of the most important posts in Italy. There, “Don Matteo,” as he is known, continued to work with poor people and migrants. “Welcoming migrants is a historic challenge for Europe,” he has said. “Christ invites us to not turn away.”

And in recent years Francis appointed Cardinal Zuppi to the key role of envoy for Ukraine matters.

He has also been welcoming to L.G.B.T. Catholics, writing the preface for the Italian edition of the Rev. James Martin’s 2017 book, “Building a Bridge,” which called for the church to find new pastoral ways of ministering to gay people."

James Martin is one of the great jesuit priests I think, and has been really reaching out to LGBT Catholics. You can follow him on X or bluesky

Thread of pure gold.

Average Asian Cardinal: brother was/currently is President of his country. Playing a game of 6th dimensional chess with China we can’t even dream of comprehending

Average Latin American Cardinal: Affectionally called “Chito” by his flock. Pushed a man out of a helicopter in ‘77

— Brendan Fraser Crane (@bf_crane) April 22, 2025

NEW POPE

Pope harder!

Let's go!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNTAxZTBjODctMjZjZC00ZjAyLWExZTctYmNkODczNmZjMTM0XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg

once again I've missed the boat for making Pope Idol photoshops

Well, Trump had said he didn't want the voting to go past the second round.

Give 'Em Enough Pope

https://bsky.app/profile/damienowens.bsky.social/post/3lo6wuujh622u

are they checking his balls right now or was that part of the lore not true?

Vatican going for a New Pope any% run

Can they get on with it

Sky News found an American priest in St Peter’s Square and he offered the final points of interest:

- This is just like when the Eagles won the Super Bowl in Philly
- We love the Pope in Philly

Wait did he say it was Prevost?

American Pope?!

Yes

American Pope!

Papal name is Leo XIV

xiiv

Chicago pope!

Wikipedia was quick!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_XIV

today's smartphone-addled cardinals got zero attention span, what happened to a good old-fashioned 3 week conclave?

All hopped up on Red Bull, it's a time.

In a true test of faith, sacramental wine to be replaced by Malört.

JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others https://t.co/hDKPKuMXmu via @NCRonline

— Robert Prevost (@drprevost) February 3, 2025