This past Sunday was the first in many years that the Pope did not perform the usual mass in Rome. As you are most certainly aware - unless you've just awoken from a coma (welcome back!) - Pope Benedict XVI officially and quite surprisingly resigned as pontiff last month to become, in his words, "a pilgrim."
So, he has now gone off to presumably settle in the New World, create Thanksgiving or whatever it is pilgrims actually do leaving a pretty sweet job opening for the right candidate.
But it'd be far more interesting if the conclave of 115 cardinals choosing the next Pope go the other way and decide to pick the absolute wrong guy for the job.
I'm totally available if that's the case.
I'd love to be Pope. It seems like great employment.
First off, the company pays for your clothes. Sure, it's all white suits and capes - which have got to be just hell to keep clean - but as Pope, I'm sure I'd get a discount at the Vatican Laundromat. Also, you get to wear that big pointy Pope hat thing, which not only would make me look way taller, but also I'd get to look like a wizard all day.
The next cool thing you get as Pope is the "Popemobile." Sure, it looks like a giant, slow-moving, Pope snowglobe, but there are only two "mobiles" in the world and I'm not fit, rich or smart enough to be Batman, so I have to settle.
I know a lot of you are thinking, "Look man, you can't be Pope unless you're a cardinal and been prominent in the Roman Catholic Church."
But, these days the rules are changing fast and furious, it seems.
This is the first Pope in some 600 years to actually resign, and right after he did, the rules were changed so a conclave could be called earlier and a new pontiff chosen with more haste. So if they can change those rules, why not the first Agnostic/Atheist Pope? It would certainly be a different Vatican than people are used to at the moment. There probably wouldn't be as much "religious-y" talk in Latin and I'd let gay people get married, so they can argue and be miserable like the rest of us. Why should they get all the breaks? I'm also thinking "Vatican Bake Sale," but I'd have to check the books to see how we're fixed for cash right now and make sure the last guy didn't run off with the silverware.
But as I write this, the conclave has already begun, so I guess I'm out of luck this time around. That's such a shame. Gosh, do you think it would help if I prayed? No, I didn't think so.
