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| Cardinals Gather In Sistine Chapel to Vote On A New Pope |
Black Smoke. White Smoke. Cardinals. Conclave.
It’s all part of the Vatican lingo surrounding the pagentry and tradition of electing a new pope to shepherd the millions of Catholics around the globe.
Behind the closed doors of the infamous Sistine Chapel in Rome, Italy, 115 Roman Catholic cardinals on Tuesday started the mysterious business of coming together as a conclave to vote for a man to become pope and succeed Benedict XVI who last month became the first pope to resign in six centuries.
You don’t have to be Catholic to be curious about who will be elected by a two-thirds majority of the cardinals. As we wait each day to see the color of the smoke from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney (black smoke = no pope, white smoke = new pope), I think we’re allowed to have a little fun (laughter is powerful medicine) with the whole process.
Enter James Martin, SJ, contributing editor at America magazine and author of “Between Heaven and Mirth” and “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.” Martin is charismatic, witty, insightful and of course eloquent (because he’s a Jesuit).
Here is Martin’s tongue-in-cheek video called the “Top Ten Reasons To Be (And Not To Be) Pope:
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