White smoke appearing

39% of Catholics are in Latin America. Total of worldwide Catholics is around 1.2 billion. Seems like a logical choice?

Pope Francis the 1st won't be taking the bus to work, won't be living in a small apartment and neither will be preparing his own meals anymore.

Many years ago the Jesuits used to be thought of being the *elite* of the catholic church due to their studies. Don't know if that has changed.

 

Yeah I've been watching it on the news every so often, I was interested to find out this time they no longer use the traditional things to make the smoke signals because people struggle to work out the colour of the smoke, this time they have chemicals that produce coloured smoked. The church finally embracing 100 year old smoke technology:-D

I thought maybe in another 100 years they have a big screen and CGI smoke like the superbowl:-D

 

A lot of politics, including the Roman Catholic Church, is braking with tradition after centuries of being the same.
We had the first non-Italian Pope for many centuries before, ( with a pretty dodgey war-time past, i.m.o., too). Now we have all the other precedents to add to it.
But it isn't just the Catholic Church that's having to change, at least partly with the times, U.S.A. , as we all know has had the first Black president. We in Aust. and N.Z. have had the first woman P.M., etc. etc.
Maybe the it will herald a time of new reforms within the Catholic institution. Time will tell. It's pretty difficult to imagine that there won't be radical changes in the Catholic church. The question is - will they be for the better?
Can't they just said up a heap of coloured skyrockets? At least it would look cool. LOL

 

Yes, to all 4 points you made.

The word *elite* was probably a badly chosen word by me. *Scholars* is definitely the right one. And I agree with you that he might not be a liberal pope. He seemed to be showing humility when addressing the people and that is a good thing. Why these cardinals usually choose an older man for pope goes beyond me.

Apparently, the current pope was the runner-up of the previous one.

 

Well, being elected Pope is a bit like being chosen for President of a Communist country, (no, not saying they're Communist). But you have to have about 50+ years of experience before they trust you for the job. They don't want some young yuppie that wants to change everything because he thinks he knows better than everyone else.

 

All I believe to have heard is that a cardinal who is 80 years and above is not allowed to go to Rome to vote. If that is so, it would eliminate the possibility that anyone over 80 could be chosen as pope.

If there were term limits in place for popes, that would eliminate a 40 year reign. :-D But that would cause to have way too many popes emiritus.(sp?)

 

I think it's exactly like the political system where it comes to age, they have to know the person is a team player but mainly as politics they have to have paid their dues to become one of the leaders, if someone younger is chosen half of the members would become disgruntled because another person is more deserving of the "reward".

I think it would be interesting is Jesus reappeared, he'd do his own thang probably and form his own little group that didn't conform to the churches wishes, he most definitely wouldn't play the political game and endeavour being liked by the other cardinals.

So I doubt Jesus would get elected as the new pope:-D

 

Well. This pope should be interesting. It seems the first thing he did was sneak out of the Vatican and head to one of the Basilica's in Rome.

 

I was born and brought up a Catholic but renounced my faith years ago for reasons Laura has said she does not want airing in this forum.

Many have questioned why the pope has retired and there are many theories around but one that tends to rise above the rest is the in fighting and coruption in the Curia

has gone out of control and the only way to is to start again,the new pope like a president or prime minister gets to appoint the new Curia and hopefully will get to grips with all the ensuing scandals that befell Benedict XVI.

The Papacy have had 266 popes (including the new one) and have led the Catholic church for over 600 years but now with falling numbers of priests and church attendances they need to go in a new direction and address the issues of the modern age but i am unsure how they will do it when they always elect old cardinals to be their leader.