I like Pope Francis. He seems to be kind-hearted, intelligent, and genuinely focused on helping the poor. When he expresses opinions, they tend to be ones I agree with, at least as much as is consistent with him still being Catholic. He’s done a lot of substantive good work.

But that’s not what anybody’s focused on. And what they do focus on confuses me.

Suppose that people were to get super excited about President Obama wearing a US flag pin. “He’s so patriotic! He even demonstrates his love for America on his clothing!” Or going to Arlington Cemetary on Memorial Day: “Look how much the sacrifice of American soldiers moves him!”

But really all this proves is that Obama isn’t a total idiot. Wearing a flag pin is an easy way to signal patriotism, and if you’re the President signaling patriotism is a free public opinion boost. In the same way, it’s hard to imagine a self-interested President conceiving of the idea of going to Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day and not acting on it. It would just be dumb.

Pope Francis does some pretty heart-warming things, like washing the feet of the poor and letting little kids sit in his Pope chair, abandoning his papal luxury palace for a humble apartment, and baptizing orphaned puppies (has he done this yet? I assume it’s only a matter of time).

Thing is, I think of the counterfactual universe where I’m Pope, and having been made aware of the possibility of doing these things, it’s hard to imagine not going through with them. For getting rid of the furniture made of solid gold that no sane person would even want, I can have the entire world talk about my humility. For two hours of my time and the cost of a foot-washing basin, I can be Time Person of the Year.

For me, the story isn’t why Francis is so great, but why his predecessors didn’t do stuff like this all the time. Yes, okay, Pope Benedict XVI gets creeped out by humans and he’s not sure his immune matrix can handle their Earth germs. Fine. What were the other 264 guys’ excuses? Why don’t we get to hear about them secretly sneaking out of the Vatican to help the homeless in a way that makes it almost certain it would leak out (I’m not saying Pope Francis is really doing this, just that if he isn’t it’s probably because he didn’t think of it in time)?

Maybe Francis is just the first Pope who understands PR. The past two Popes were born in the 1920s; maybe they never really figured out the Age of Mass Media. I doubt future Popes will make that mistake.

I am not accusing Pope Francis of being shady or Machiavellian (although Machiavelli’s The Prince does in fact contain a whole chapter on advice for Popes). Just saying that if he were Machiavellian, he’d probably do pretty much what he’s doing now.

EDIT: Jed brings up in the comments what seems to me a good point. Perhaps previous Popes were interested in public opinion, and did do a good job managing it, but believed that people would be more impressed by golden thrones and fancy regalia and ritual than by conspicuous humility. Perhaps that belief was correct. That would say something pretty impressive about the world and the Church – that over the past century the optimal strategy in making people think you are a holy figure worthy of respect has changed from “have a really big solid gold scepter” to “radiate humility and love for all mankind”. Did we enter the Millennium without noticing?

Several news sources both secular and religious have tried to provide me with information on the potential successors without success. The articles tends to be a bunch of pictures of identical-looking old guys in red robes, which then go on to point out that this old guy in red robes was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but this old guy in red robes was head of the European Congress of Bishops, whereas this old guy in red robes was head of the Pontifical Council for Justice.

Some stories do classify them as either “liberal”, “moderate”, or “conservative”, which sounds more promising. But they never quite give any hint of what these terms could possibly mean, as all the cardinals seem about equally opposed to homosexuality and abortion and women priests and as far as I can tell everything else.

Proooobably there are aspects of this which are fascinating for Catholics, but as an atheist, I want two things from a Pope.

First, I kind of want him to be progressive. I have also accepted this will never happen*. For a while I thought I could kind of get away with hoping for relative progressivism, like rooting for the guy who was stuck in the 18^th century over the guy who was stuck in the 15^th century. But the differences between them seem so slight as to make this a dangerous game. And it seems sort of like a form of cultural imperialism to demand the head of a religion I don’t believe should parrot my views and ignore the views of his religion’s actual members.

But second, and less controversially, I want him to be hilarious. “Pope” is a funny word. Everyone knows this is true, even if they don’t admit it. And the Papacy itself tends to involve a person who looks like Emperor Palpatine going around in a huge hat saying silly things and mumbling prophecies of doom. I want someone who can carry on that legacy.

I understand it’s not always an unalloyed good to mock what is holy. But if something makes a claim to holiness, and falls short, and does it in a really funny way, such that you can still take good-hearted cheer in the bungled attempt without trying to mock the idea of holiness itself – well, I think that’s all in good fun.

So I’ve been reading through the biographies of some of the important cardinals and, while looking for evidence of their strong opinions on important issues, I’ve mostly just been collecting interesting or bizarre facts about them. And I thought that just in case any other atheists also wanted to know which of the papabile cardinals were most hilarious, I might as well turn it into a blog post.

Since this doesn’t solve the “all papal candidates look alike” problem, I’ve also replaced their pictures with a picture of someone else whose name sounds like theirs. To, you know, help keep them separate in my mind.

Cardinal Angelo Scola
Country of Origin:	Italy
Odd Professorships Held:	Professor of Contemporary Christology, Professor of Theological Anthropology
Position on Abortion:	Pro-life
Key Quote Indicative Of His Intellectual Prowess:	“Would not Husserl’s reduction, together with the critique of constituting intentionality, rise up in protest against such a notion of foundation? On the other hand, to say that the foundation is already in place is not to reduce it to a ‘supreme being’ that can be adequate, as an object, to the conceptual representation of a subject, as naive realism would have it. Could the foundation, so conceived, stand up to Heidegger’s well-known critique of onto-theology?” (source)
Key Quote Which Is Also, Confusingly, Indicative Of The Intellectual Prowess Of The Same Person:	“Having abandoned the Christian faith, and disappointed by the claims of Enlightenment reason, [non-believers] find themselves defenceless before reality. To-overcome this anguish they resort to magic, which would allow them to gain the protection of occult powers, and they do not refrain from seeking an alliance with these same powers of evil. [But] participation in satanic sects and cults leaves man ever more defenceless before Satan. In this sense it can be supposed that those who belong to satanic sects risk becoming more easily the prey of realities such as witchcraft, the evil eye, diabolical disturbances and demonic possession.” (source)
Possible Scandals:	● His mentor, Emanuele Severino, was censured by the church for teaching “neo-Parminideanism” ● Seriously, there are still people who believe Parmenides around? Man, if you’re going to get in trouble with the Church for teaching heterodox philosophy, why would you choose the one philosopher who’s even worse than what the Church already believes?
Probability of Secretly Being A Vampire:	Low
Probability Of Election Precipitating The Apocalypse, According To Questionable Prophecy By Medieval Irish Saint:	Low

Cardinal Peter Turkson
Country of Origin:	Ghana
Background:	Son of a carpenter; this is expected to play well in the Vatican
Position on Abortion:	Pro-life
Key Quote	“Conditions exist for definitively going beyond a Westphalian international order in which the States feel the need for cooperation but do not seize the opportunity to integrate their respective sovereignties for the common good of peoples. Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world Authority and to regional Authorities, but this is necessary.” (source)
Possible Scandals:	● Showed sketchy anti-Muslim YouTube video at important conference; video later turned out to be totally fake ● Lack of long-form birth certificate meanswe can’t be sure he’s really from the Vatican ●Curse of Ham
Probability of Secretly Being A Vampire:	Low
Probability Of Election Precipitating The Apocalypse, According To Questionable Prophecy By Medieval Irish Saint:	Moderate to high

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco
Country of Origin:	Italy
Odd Professorships Held:	Professor of Contemporary Atheism
Position on Abortion:	Pro-life
Key Quote:	“Why say no to forms of legally recognised co-habitation which create alternatives to the family? Why say no to incest? Why say no to the paedophile party in Holland?” (source)
Possible Scandals:	● Keeps getting death threats because of above quote. ● That whole “Professor of Atheism” thing really is kind of suspicious
Probability of Secretly Being A Vampire:	Moderate, but I might just be saying that because of the picture
Probability Of Election Precipitating The Apocalypse, According To Questionable Prophecy By Medieval Irish Saint:	Low

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Country of Origin:	Italy
Odd Professorships Held:	Professor of Special Moral Theology
Celebrity Endorsements:	The ghost of Pope John Paul II, in a dream
Position on Abortion:	Pro-ch…no! Wait! Pro-life
Key Policies for Papacy	The Cardinal is a huge soccer fan and used to give amateur commentary on local matches. He has suggested the Vatican participate in international soccer, stating that “we could, in future, field a team that plays at the top level, with Roma, Internazionale, Genoa and Sampdoria” and that “If we just take the Brazilian students from our Pontifical universities we could have a magnificent squad”. He later claimed to have been joking.
Possible Scandals:	● Cardinal Bertone is accused of lying about the text of a secret apocalyptic prophecy to cover up a part where Rome is declared to become the throne of the Antichrist
Probability of Secretly Being A Vampire:	Low
Probability Of Election Precipitating The Apocalypse, According To Questionable Prophecy By Medieval Irish Saint:	Low – but if he’s already covered up one apocalyptic prophecy can we really trust him on this one?

Cardinal Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert, Count von Schönborn
Really?	Yes
Country of Origin:	Czechoslovakia/Austria
Born In Ominous Castle Upon Hilltop?	Yes
Odd Professorships Held:	Professor of Dogmatics
Position on Abortion:	Pro-life
Key Quote:	“The modern world needs badly to hear this message. What frequently passes for modern science —with its heavy accretion of materialism and positivism— is simply wrong about nature in fundamental ways. Modern science is often, in the words of my essay, “ideology, not science.” (source)
Possible Scandals:	● Might have maybe kinda once condemned sexual abuse, proving him to be obviously crazy and unfit for the position. ● Impeccable anti-science credentials, but does he hate gay people enough?
Probability of Secretly Being A Vampire:	The only part of that question stopping me from saying “100%” is the word “secretly”
Would I Still Probably Prefer Him To Anyone Else On This List?	Signs point to yes

Footnote:

1: When I was young, I read a passage from an alternate history book where James Joyce joins the priesthood, was eventually elevated to the papacy under the name Pope Stephen X, and reformed the Church, Irish-style. It had a lasting effect on me and you can find it here. Search for “The Stephenites were the most radical of all the Catholic clergy.“

The arrests will come from the US government, who continue to ban prediction markets in order to, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, “protect market integrity”. To me this sort of seems like a case of locking the barn door after the horse has fled, traveled to Boston, been accepted to MIT, earned a degree in high energy physics, constructed a revolutionary FTL drive, and warped to the outer fringes of the Andromeda Galaxy – but such is the noble and impartial majesty of the law.

The damnations will come from the Vatican. In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV issued a papal bull banned all betting on papal elections under pain of excommunication. This has never really been enforced, but as far as I know it’s still in effect.

Luckily not everyone is afraid of Pope Gregory, and the Papal betting markets continue to function. As one would expect of something at the intersection of Catholicism and gambling, the most significant are in Ireland, especially at paddypower.com, which is offering odds on candidates as unlikely as Richard Dawkins, Bono, and Father Dougal Maguire – who, as you may recall, is fictional.

PaddyPower is also significant for their special bonus offer to refund all losing bets if the next Pope is black. There’s about a 1/3 chance this will be the case – two black cardinals are considered likely candidates – which means it should in theory be possible to come out ahead on net by betting on the leading white guy.

I can think of more complicated plans to get guaranteed free money by getting several people together to bet on all the leading white guys, plus hedging against InTrade’s market that the next Pope will be African, but the maximum refundable bet on PaddyPower is 25 pounds, making this more trouble than it’s worth, which I guess is what the betting markets are counting on.

Another so-close-yet-so-far route to free money is betting on the next Pope’s name. PaddyPower gives even odds in favor of the next Pope’s name being Pope Peter II, which is of course ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to bet against this proposition, which is probably by design.

If InTrade set up a next papal name betting market, that would allow much better calculation of these Peter II odds. Unfortunately, as an American I can’t easily bet in InTrade, and the only person I know who’s done the necessary paperwork to avoid the civil authorities, Leah, is also the only person I know who will be genuinely deterred by Pope Gregory XIV’s papal bull.

I continue to think there ought to be some way to money-pump this “next Pope” thing, but I can’t figure out what it is.