My advances have been scorned by the Cult of the Red Beanie in favor of a 76 year old Jesuit from Argentina. It looks like the powers that be have the caretaker pontiff of their dreams. There’s no cure for the curia, after all.Charlie Pierce sees this as an extension of the papacies of John Paul and Eggs Benedict:
OK, so he’s the first pope from Latin America, and the
first Francis, which ties him with Hilarius and a few dozen others for
last place in the papal names rankings. He’s also a member of The
Society — A Jesuit pope, the first one, which means Dan Brown gets five
more novels. (Strangely enough, the Jesuits, in their Fourth Vow, take a
special vow of obedience to…wait for it…the pope. This is going to
make for an interesting internal monologue for the new fella, I’m
thinking.) Most important, he’s 76-years old which means, quite
honestly, that the man’s a caretaker, or that there is a real faction
within the cardinal-electors arrayed against the idea of very long
papacies on the order of that of John Paul II. The last pope, in a
conclave that was a bigger fix than the 1919 World Series, was the
obvious choice, but he also was 78 upon his election, and he reigned
only five years. It’s hard to imagine Francis I going much longer than
that. It’s also hard to imagine that this wasn’t some kind of plan all
along.
