Habemus Papam . . .

Well the new guy in Rome must be OK as he is going down like a lead balloon with the Grauniad!  They have lost no time at all hitching him to the Junta, how utterly predictable.

I can imagine his reception will be lukewarm in the UK all round with the Falklands scenario too, or the Malvinas as he would have it.

Interesting, the first Jesuit ever, so aesthetic personally, intellectually and doctrinally right wing and socially left wing. A curious mixture.  So that will shake the roots of the queer cabal running the Vatican, wonder if that is one of the reasons they gave it to him quite so fast?  Only two days to give it to a New World Jesuit?  Strikes me they wanted that job off their hands PDQ!

From what I have read, as a person, he really does remind me of Chavez (the dead Venezuelan), if that is so, that will set the cat amongst the pigeons to see personal austerity at the Vatican and the curtailment of perks for Cardinals and big wigs.

I wish him well, he has a hard row to hoe to clean out such extensive Augean stables!

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Author: christinaosborne

Landed on one side safely.

27 thoughts on “Habemus Papam . . .”

  2. Hello Mrs. O. Seems he was a close runner up the last time (2005) so perhaps not so surprising. I see Mrs. Karchner (sp?) now thinks he is the bees knees despite their running fight about gay marriage in Argie.

    Best quote on the subject : Iranian State television “Habemus Papam is named as the new pope”

  3. LW love it.

    Thank you for a title whoever did it!

    I still think 2 days was fast considering how many troubles the Church has. I rather wonder what saw off the last one quite so fast into the first retirement for 600 years. More than just ill health, maybe it will emerge from the shadows in due course.

  5. My favourite newsdesk, the Daily Male, asserts he narrowly missed losing his cherry at the age of 12 to his schoolgirl sweetheart. Many of us of course did the same but managed to rescue the situation before too long. Young Francis, allegedly, has only dreamed of success ever since.

    I fear there will be a holy row about many things but little information unless Holy Tony gets a look in. The there’ll be a rveleation, I’m sure.

  8. Well “papa” is first declension, Janus, but like “agricola” and “poeta” not feminine, I think.

  9. I see Kirchner and Cameron have started already.
    Should have had a bet on it but the odds would have been hideously short!!!

  10. The delusions about the Falkland Islands aside, the pope is quite right. If clergy were to read the Bible they would find that they should live modest, humble lives. Humble housing, simple meals. If a car is needed it should be a very simple, practical vehicle. This love of material wealth is thoroughly condemned. The luxury of and affluence of church bureaucrats runs counter to the teachings of the church. That said, I am rather on the materialist side but I also haven’t dedicated my life to serving anything but myself…

  11. It’s rather ironic that Francis of Assisi (and his followers) narrowly escaped being declared a heretic for preaching ‘clerical poverty’…

    I wish this Pope luck – at least I won’t have to be offended by him wearing Cloth of Gold like Benedict – but I suspect he will have as little luck returning the Church to the message of Christ as his namesake did..

  12. sheona :

    Well “papa” is first declension, Janus, but like “agricola” and “poeta” not feminine, I think.

    I beg to differ. You and Sipu have used an inadequate google. The ending is indisputably feminine. 🙂

  14. I am sure “Snoz”, my old Latin master, would have been very upset if I had told him papa, agricola etc. were feminine nouns. All this noun gender nonsense is one reason why English is so widely used.

  15. I didn’t use google, Janus, just memories of first year Latin. When I see my old Latin teacher, now almost ninety but very spry, at our reunion this summer, I shall raise the matter with her.

  17. In Italian and Castellano the term is il Papa and el Papa respectively. There is also the matter of il sistema and el sistema and la mano. There are quirks that get carried over.

  18. Ah yes! “Petrus erat bonus papa”. No doubt he was, and who would have dared to make his adjective agree with his title? 😉 BUT if his girlfriend had been a farmer, would they have said, ” Puella erat bonus agricola”? I wonder.

    Sheona, I’d appreciate your Latin master’s views! I suspect the point is what the lawyers call moot.

  19. Oh for goodness sake Janus, why can’t you ever admit that you are wrong? The masculine adjective bonus agrees with the masculine noun papa.

  21. PS this is (as so often) not about my being right or wrong but about the need to explain a point.

  24. I understand that many romance languages have what appears to be a ‘feminine’ ending to the noun. In Portuguese, for example, you can have o contabalista for a male accountant and a contabalista for a female one. Similarly there is o dia for ‘the day’, ‘dia’ being a male noun.

    Simples. 🙂

    OZ

  25. I have a sneaky feeling that Julius Caesar might have had a chuckle at the thought of a table being female, or of a year being male – although he might not have had a problem with war being neuter…

    I don’t know which bright spark decided to define nouns as feminine, masculine or neuter, but he (and it would have been a he!) has created confusion for generations who have been taught foreign languages from a grammatical base rather than by usage.

    One really needs to define words in terms of the way they are used and not by their endings. Quite clearly, in the context of the Catholic Church, the word ‘Papa’ refers to a male.

  26. Not a Latin master, Janus, but a feisty lady, who even now can reduce me to shuffling my feet and muttering “Yes, Miss A. No, Miss A. Sorry Miss A.” When she learned that I had been teaching some beginners Latin, she looked at me in horror and said “But you didn’t read Classics!”

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