WEDNESDAY EVE

 

A distraction from pope news.

SEAGULL PERCHED ON SISTINE CHAPEL CHIMNEY

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- As the world awaits smoke signals from the Sistine Chapel that indicate whether a new pope has been chosen, a seagull perched atop the chimney. (Source: Bloomberg) --

UPDATE: White smoke issued from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel signaling that a pope has been elected. The bells of St Peter are ringing.

UPDATE 2: The new pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio,76, of Argentina, has chosen the name Francis.  The 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church is the first non-European leader of the church in more than 1,000 years.

OH DEAR!

A day ahead of the papal conclave, faces at the scandal-struck Vatican were even redder than usual after it emerged that the Holy See had purchased a €23 million (£21 million) share of a Rome apartment block that houses Europe’s biggest gay sauna.

The senior Vatican figure sweating the most due to the unlikely proximity of the gay Europa Multiclub is probably Cardinal Ivan Dias, the head of the Congregation for Evangelisation of Peoples, who is due to participate in tomorrow’s election at the Sistine Chapel.

This 76-year-old “prince of the church” enjoys a 12-room apartment on the first-floor of the imposing palazzo, at 2 Via Carducci, just yards from the ground floor entrance to the steamy flesh pot. There are 18 other Vatican apartments in the block, many of which house priests.

And the conservative Cardinal Dias never knew, even though information about the gay sauna is on the internet.  Perhaps the cardinal is not a techie.  How embarrassed he must be.  Will he move?  He can always choose to look the other way when he comes out of his front door.  One thing for sure, the Vatican keeps its cardinals in style.

THE PAPAL CONCLAVE

To the left, the cardinals are shown processing into the mass in St Peter's Basilica this morning before gathering in the Sistine Chapel to begin the Papal Conclave.

To the right is the Sistine Chapel set up for the for the cardinals meeting in the Papal Conclave to elect the new pope.

The cardinals walk up the aisle toward Michangelo's "The Last Judgement" to place their ballots in the ballot box.

Black smoke issued from the chimney this evening to signal that no pope was elected on the first ballot.  When the new pope has been chosen, white smoke will come from the chimney, and a bell will ring as an additional signal.

The picture of the cardinals in procession made me smile because in my Roman Catholic elementary school such a straggly line would not have been tolerated. We would have heard from the sister in charge, "Straighten that line!"

PAUL RYAN'S FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE DAY

In his press conference, as he presents the GOP's radical new budget, Representative Paul Ryan says :

This to us is something that we're not going to give up on, because we're not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people.

Ryan's vaunted concern about the deficit is a cover for his true ambition, as Paul Krugman says:

Meanwhile, he was pursuing radical redistribution away from the needy to the wealthy.

Nothing has changed, except that the plan has gotten even crueler.

Thanks to "The Jed Report" at Daily Kos for the link to the video.

FACEBOOK DRAMA

Well, there's the Papal Conclave now that distracts me a little from Facebook.

And further about Facebook:

Clicking those friendly blue "like" buttons strewn across the Web may be doing more than marking you as a fan of Coca-Cola or Lady Gaga.

It could out you as gay.

It might reveal how you vote.

It might even suggest that you're an unmarried introvert with a high IQ and a weakness for nicotine.

That's the conclusion of a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers reported analyzing the likes of more than 58,000 American Facebook users to make guesses about their personalities and behavior, and even whether they drank, smoked, or did drugs.

Cambridge University researcher David Stillwell, one of the study's authors, said the results may come as a surprise.

"Your likes may be saying more about you than you realize," he said.

OMG!  I am shocked, I tell ya, just shocked.  Seriously, I realize that by just having a presence on Facebook, I've yielded a huge amount of privacy.  Anyone who cares deeply about privacy should go away from the site and stay away.

Some likes were more revealing than others.
...

Men who liked TV song-and-dance sensation "Glee" were more likely to be gay. Men who liked professional wrestling were more likely to be straight. Drinking game aficionados were generally more outgoing than, say, fans of fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett. People who preferred pop diva Jennifer Lopez usually gathered more Facebook friends than those who favored the heavy metal sound of Iron Maiden.

Who would ever have expected...?  Heh heh.  So y'all take care out there in the Facebook jungle.

I will never again friend a person who is not at least a friend of a friend, someone with whom I have not one friend in common.  One time was enough to teach me a lesson, and I can't remember why I chose to do so that one time, but it was a mistake. 

MONDAY EVE

Poor baby must have been scared to death.

NOT RED SHOES, BUT RED SOCKS

No, not those Red Sox.

 

That's the perfect sock for your cassock, Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai. Comfortable and easy on the eyes yet it makes a bold statement at the same time.

Rather dashing, don't you think?

Check out more pictures of fashion statements of the cardinals, along with commentary, at The Huffington Post.

Thanks to Ann V.

IS CARDINAL O'MALLEY A CONTENDA?

Cardinal Sean O'Malley

[Cardinal Sean P.] O’Malley has repeatedly dismissed the notion that he is a contender, and he continued to do so Sunday at his titular church. (All cardinals are assigned as honorary patrons to a Roman church; O’Malley’s is Santa Maria Della Vittoria.)

Clad in a red cardinal’s cassock for Mass, he silently climbed the steps of the church — a Baroque masterpiece resplendent with elaborate frescoes and marble sculpture, most notably Bernini’s masterwork, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa.

The Rev. Rocco Visca, a member of the Discalced Carmelite friars who run Santa Maria Della Vittoria, lavished praise on the cardinal as he opened the service, calling O’Malley humble and a friend to the friars. He said he hoped that this would be O’Malley’s last visit as a cardinal and that the church would be his first stop after he became pope.

Santa Maria Della Vittoria

The titular church of Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads the Archdiocese of Boston in the United States, is pictured to the left.

Today, the cardinal priests have a loose patronal relationship with their titular churches (their names and coats of arms are inscribed on plaques in the churches, and many raise funds for their church's maintenance and restoration), but they no longer participate in the actual management of the churches. There are now 143 presbyteral titular churches. Likewise, the cardinal bishops are given only honorary title to the 7 suburbicarian dioceses, and the cardinal deacons are given a similar relationship to the churches of their 69 deaconries.

The Ecstasy of St Teresa

To the left is a photo of Bernini's magnificent sculpture, The Ecstasy of St Teresa. The sculpture follows closely the descriptions in her writings of Teresa of Ávila's ecstatic experiences during prayerful contemplative meditation.

In answer to my playful question in the title of the post, I believe the chances that Cardinal O'Malley or any prelate from the United States will be elected pope are slim to none.  The view of the US and its leaders from the outside is, all too often, as power-hungry and desirous of ruling the world, and few cardinals wish to put the power of the Vatican in the hands of an American.  Besides, the Italian cardinals think it's time to put an Italian back on the papal throne.  Barring an agreement on the election of an Italian, the next choice might be a cardinal from a third-world country or from a country in one of the Americas, but not the United States.  There you have my predictions, which are not specific, nor should they in any way be considered conjectures from an expert in papal elections.

FOUR CARDINALS TAKE A BREAK FROM THE CONCLAVE?

 

I report; you decide.

Don't blame me.  Blame Paul (A.), who had his poor, long-suffering wife do the work.