HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM: Popetastic conclavular 2013 ends with a surprise win for Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A surprise pick: Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis

Okay, so I was wrong.

Wrong about Marc Ouellet winning the big prize, then, having doubts earlier today, about Angelo Scola taking it. But I was right about the white smoke coming today -- even though a conclave with no clear frontrunner could have been expected to go longer -- and when it did, after just five ballots, I really did think it was Scola, whose election, as experts like John Allen were saying, would have been a vote for continuity, as he's an orthodox thinker in the mold of Ratzinger/Benedict (if more personable), and so a fairly safe pick at a time of crisis and uncertainty throughout the Church.

But if not Ouellet or Scola, then maybe one of other leading non-Europeans like Peter Turkson or Odilo Scherer, or maybe even an American, Sean O'Malley.

And so when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the senior cardinal deacon, appeared on the balcony at St. Peter's to say (in Latin) those famous two words -- habemus papam -- and announce the name of the new pope, and I heard the name Bergoglio, I was surprised, to say the least. Who? What? Bergoglio? That guy? Really?

Yes, that guy.

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Crisis in the Conclave: First day of 2013 Popetacular reaches popeless conclusion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Black smoke = the absence of God, or failure, or something

So here we are. A few hours into the papal election and still no pope. What are these guys waiting for? Isn't their "God" telling them what to do?

Actually, we're only one vote into the conclave. The 115 cardinals (all cardinals under the age of 80) entered the Sistine Chapel at 4:30 pm Vatican time and conducted a single vote that, not surprisingly, failed to produce the necessary two-thirds majority for any one candidate.

And so the smoke was black. (Check out this interesting piece on the mysteries of the smoke.)

There will now be four votes daily -- two in the morning and two in the afternoon, with ballots burned afterwards, black and finally white -- until there's a winner.

Apparently there's no campaigning in the Sistine Chapel itself, with the politicking taking place during dinner and other breaks. So what happened today is that the cardinals stated their initial preferences. It may be that the first vote today determined the obvious frontrunners, as it did last time when Ratzinger emerged as the likely pick, or it may just be that the cardinals are divided behind a number of choices. Either way, today's vote no doubt set the table for the quiet discussions and deliberations to come, and that the situation will be much clearer by the morning.

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Where to relax in Rome

By Mustang Bobby

After a tough day at the Vatican, there's just one place to go to relax:

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.

The surprise isn't that the Vatican owns a gay bathhouse; it's that they haven't franchised it yet.

Via JMG.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Off to a rough start in the Vatican

By Mustang Bobby

 
 The process for picking the next head of the Catholic Church is not exactly beginning well: 

The first day of discussion was rocked by revelations of scandal, with Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitting that he had engaged in sexual misconduct not befitting a priest, archbishop or cardinal.

I know I'm just a simple Quaker, but I thought that one of the rules of being a priest, archbishop, or cardinal was that there was no room for sexual conduct, let alone misconduct. Isn't sex of any kind on the permanent given-up-for-Lent list? (h/t Hawkeye Pierce) The only punishment for Cardinal O'Brien is that he can't come to Rome to pick the next guy; he gets to stay home and presumably spend the rest of his days updating his profile on Manhunt ("Semi-retired and now available on Sundays. Can't host.")

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The glories of the Vatican Library

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Frank Moraes

MJWS:

Let's take a bit of a break. We've spent so much of the past few days reading, thinking, and writing about the horrific Sandy Hook massacre. And, really, what President Obama said last night was so very moving, and just what was needed. We can't tolerate this anymore. We must put an end to it.

We'll get back to the news soon, but here's a video about some very beautiful things that's well worth checking out.

Frank and I, both non-religious, are in agreement that we love the history and art of religion. I actually studied illuminated manuscripts in college, the Book of Kells, housed at Trinity College in Dublin, is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen in person, and the British Library's Sir John Ritblat Gallery, which I visited this past spring, is one of the most incredible places in the world.

FM:

Last night, 60 Minutes reported on the Vatican Library. This is what I love about religion: history! And some of the illuminated manuscripts are stunning. Check this out, it is really good:

The Fox and the Pope: A cautionary tale

By tmcbpatriot 

Well, that didn't take long.

From HuffPost:

VATICAN CITY, July 21 (Reuters) - The Vatican has stripped the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, one of the most prominent centres of learning in Latin America, of its right to continue calling itself a Catholic or pontifical university, saying it had damaged the interests of the Church...

The Vatican said on Saturday that the break came after the university had several times unilaterally modified its statutes and had "gravely prejudiced the interests of the Church". It did not elaborate.

I wonder what that means? Did the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru refuse to abuse children? That would certainly gravely prejudice the interests of the Church. However, what is actually afoot is something far more sinister. According to the story: "The university in the Peruvian capital, Lima, was founded in 1917 and has been identified with liberal, progressive thinking for decades."

Aha! The plot thickens.

This would be a surprise if one had not paid attention to this story back in June: "Fox News Reporter Hired as Vatican Media Adviser." Remember now? No? Here's more from the Times article:

In an effort to shore up its communications strategy amid a widening leaks scandal in a troubled papacy, the Vatican has hired the Fox News correspondent in Rome as a senior communications adviser. Mr. [Greg] Burke is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, and his hiring underscores the group's role in the Vatican.

Now, I know what you're thinking. How better to deflect bad media attention than to hire a Fox correspondent, and one involved with Opus Dei! I mean, it's an inspired idea. Just think of the possibilities? Charges of sexual abuse by priests? Response: just a bunch of liberal atheists trying to defraud the church. Leaked documents accusing the papacy of "cronyism and corruption"? Response: Did Michelle Obama call the pope "whitey"? And all written by a creepy albino wearing a black hood. Brilliant!

You see where I'm going with this? I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg, too. Before long, I imagine the Pope going on Fox and Friends and Hannity for exclusive interviews. In the meantime, expect to hear more flourishes like "gravely prejudiced the interests of the Church" followed by "it did not elaborate."

In other words, the Vatican is getting what it paid for.

(Cross-posted at Take My Country Back.)

Breaking! - Al Qaeda seeks sainthood for OBL

By J. Thomas Duffy

Sources tell The Garlic that instense discussions have been underway between the Vatican and representatives of al Qaeda, seeking for Pope Benedict XVI to begin the process of beatification for Osama bin Laden to become a saint.

Representatives of al Qaeda were in attendance at yesterday's beatification ceremony for Pope John Paul II.

A major obstacle, beyond the traditional five-year waiting period, is there is no evidence that bin Laden sexually abused young boys, or protected those who did.

The Vatican is insisting that al Qaeda stipulate to this before any beatification process can be started, and fast-tracked, as was the case for Pope John Paul II.

More, as this story develops.



Bonus Riffs

Bin Laden is late pope's 'miracle': Peru leader

Tim Rose: WikiLeaks: Osama bin Laden 'protected' by Pakistani security

Nicole Belle: Wanker Extraordinaire Joe Scarborough: Obama’s Base Didn’t Want Him To Catch Bin Laden

My Boy Lollipop

Vatican Discounts "Bonfire Pope"; Says Flames "Not Hunched Over Enough"

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

Yesterday in SCOTUS

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It was a mixed day, not surprising given the 4-4-1 divide (with Kennedy as the swing vote). The good news:

The Raw Story

The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal by the Vatican in a landmark case that opens the way for priests in the United States to stand trial for pedophilia.

Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases.

The Supreme Court effectively confirmed the decision of an appellate court to lift the Vatican's immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest in the northwestern state of Oregon.

The New York Times

A public law school did not violate the First Amendment by withdrawing recognition from a Christian student group that excluded gay students, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The case, involving a clash between religious freedom and antidiscrimination principles, divided along familiar ideological lines, with the court's four more liberal members and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the majority.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said it was constitutionally permissible for public institutions of higher education to require recognized student groups to accept all students who wished to participate in them.

The bad news:

The Washington Post

The Second Amendment provides Americans a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a long-sought victory for gun rights advocates.

The 5 to 4 decision does not strike down any gun-control laws, nor does it elaborate on what kind of laws would offend the Constitution. One justice predicted that an "avalanche" of lawsuits would be filed across the country asking federal judges to define the boundaries of gun ownership and government regulation.

But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the opinion for the court's dominant conservatives, said: "It is clear that the Framers... counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."

For a deeper look at the gun-rights case, see Jack Balkin and Scott Lemieux. Unfortunately, it seems to have been the right decision, legally speaking, even if it won't mean much. As Balkin notes, "[t]he vast majority of states already have guarantees of a right to bear arms."

I would just add that the ongoing Second Amendment debate in the U.S. is ridiculous. Yes, Alito is right, the Framers added "the right to keep and bear arms" to the Constitution," and may have considered that right to be "fundamental," but basing public policy in 2010 on what the Framers thought was important in 1787, right after a bloody war of independence and when the country was young and insecure, is simply the wrong way to go about addressing contemporary issues and problems. As Melissa McEwan puts it:

And that's still relevant 200 years later, despite the fact that the Framers, as ingenuous as they were, did not envision a country of 300 million+ people where almost everyone is literate and almost every adult can vote. Nor did they imagine handguns, which didn't fucking exist.

For more, see Echidne (linked by Melissa), whose anger and frustration I share (even if they the issue isn't as immediate for me, as I live in Canada, which has, compared to the U.S., strong gun laws in place):

My first thought on reading this is that desperate unemployed people can't get jobs or help from the local government but their right to be armed is honored! That makes for a really happy society in which to live.

My second thought was the one I always have when reading about the Second Amendment, which is to try to stretch my poor brain to make the leap from "well-regulated militia" to Bob-can-have-a-rifle-in-his-pants.

And so on...

What a mad, mad, mad world it is.

But at least there was a firm ruling against anti-gay bigotry, and at least Catholic sex abusers can be held accountable in courts of law for what they've done.

A mixed day indeed, even as Americans continue to arm themselves towards Armageddon.

Amusing Photo of the Day: Guard the Vatican, Swiss!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the G&M:

New recruits of the Vatican's elite Swiss Guard march during the swearing in ceremony at Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican. The Swiss Guard, founded in 1506 and consisting of 100 volunteers who must be Swiss, Catholic, single, at least 174 centimetres tall and beardless, celebrate their 502nd anniversary this year.

Damn. No wonder they rejected my application. I'm well over 174 cm, I think, but it looks like I fail on all other counts. (By the way, can you be "elite" wearing those stupid costumes?)

Vatican rejects Caroline Kennedy as U.S. ambassador

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So the Vatican won't accept Caroline Kennedy as U.S. ambassador -- or anyone else who is pro-choice (and pro-stem-cell research)?

Tough, I say.

It won't happen -- not least because there are so many Catholic voters at home to placate -- but Obama ought simply to refuse to appoint an ambassador to the so-called Holy See. Why give in? Why appoint a pro-choicer just because that's what the Vatican wants? Why implicitly approve of the Roman Catholic Church's absolutist authoritarian positions on such issues -- that is, its moral extremism -- by appointing someone who approves of the Church's positions and of whom the Church approves? What message would that send? That the U.S., that the Obama Administration, is with the Church on those issues, or that it isn't willing to stand up in defence of its own positions.

So enough. Kennedy would be a fine person to represent America's interests at the Vatican. Perhaps she could even make the case for abortion rights and stem-cell research effectively enough to challenge the Church's long-standing oppression. Not that the Church, or its leaders at the Vatican, would ever be persuaded to abandon its moral extremism, but should it not be challenged, should it not be confronted with alternatives to its extremism?

**********

Such are my views this Easter Saturday. Not that I'm celebrating Easter, other than the secular version -- bunny and eggs for the kids, a nice dinner tomorrow -- but whatever you happen to be celebrating, and I'm celebrating a four-day weekend, quality time with my family, and some fairly nice weather here in Toronto, be safe out there, and be good to one another.

-- Michael

Around the World: China, Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Ukraine, and the Vatican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The latest in our ongoing series... (for previous entries, see here or here).

1) China: "China's exports have dropped into their biggest decline in a decade. Exports in December were down 2.8% from the same time last year, a bigger decline than November's 2.2% drop, the China Daily said."

Even though "China's economy relies on domestic demand for its goods and services more than any other country in Asia," which is to say, even though the decline in exports is perhaps less of a concern to China than it would be for others, what the numbers show is that "China is no more immune to worldwide trade problems than any other large economy." And it is likely to get worse: "With Japan, the US and Europe now in recession, China's heavily trade-dependent economy is expected to harder hit through the coming year."

Still, a growth rate of 7.5% in 2009 wouldn't be so bad, would it?

2) Zimbabwe: "Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday."

As if it weren't already bad enough in that wretched place, what with the tyrant Mugabe clinging to power and continuing to oppress the people, now there's this, which "has spread to all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems." And the situation will only get worse during the January-March rainy season.

3) Somalia: "Ethiopian troops pulled out from crucial bases in Mogadishu on Tuesday, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Islamist fighters who seized their positions."

And so, with the Ethiopians soon to be out, within a matter of days, Somalia is left to the Somalis... and to "Somalia’s Islamist movement," which "has made a steady comeback, with Islamist factions again controlling much of the country.

One war is over, but another is already underway: "Many Western diplomats and other Somalia analysts have warned that once all the Ethiopians are gone, the various Islamist factions will unleash their considerable firepower on each other in a scramble to take over the country. Some of that fighting has already kicked off, with dozens of people killed in the past week in combat between moderate and radical Islamist factions."

4) Ukraine: "Just hours after Russia resumed delivery of natural gas to the European Union through Ukrainian pipelines, Kiev has admitted to blocking the supplies. Ukraine is claiming that Gazprom has established 'unacceptable' conditions for the transit of the gas to Europe."

It's a complicated situation, obviously, with Gazprom blaming the U.S. for backing the Ukraine (and accusing the Ukraine of stealing gas), but it is essentially a regional dispute between Moscow and Kiev "over gas pricing and the lucrative transit fees paid to Kiev for gas transported across its pipelines." (Though Anne Applebaum notes that it was actually Putin, who still runs the show in Russia, who actually turned off the gas, not Gazprom. So it's political, not just commercial, and, this year, Russia is very much to blame.)

Russian gas is essential to much of Europe, but what is needed is for Europe to disentangle itself from the situation by reducing its dependency on Russian gas in the first place. And that requires, in Applebaum's view (one I share, though I defer to her expertise here), "a true, unified E.U. energy policy," even if, as Clay Risen points out, there are no "easy or obvious answers" and, to put it mildly, "difficulties inherent in any such effort."

5) Vatican: "Decrying the violence that Mexicans are enduring, the Vatican has suggested excommunication as a possible punishment for drug traffickers whose war with the government has led to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year. But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged."

You think?

God's aliens

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's our (belated) Headline of the Day:

Vatican says aliens could exist

Oh, really? Well, thanks for that. Do go on:

The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out.

Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.

Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with
universities around the world.

The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.

Oh, and some of those aliens, the story goes, "could even be free from original sin." You know, because they wouldn't have been involved with the tree and the snake and the apple and the rest of the bloody nonsense that is Christianity.

But, look, at least the Vatican isn't anti-science the way, say, American christianists are, what with their whole "faith-based" opposition to reality and all. And I suppose a Vatican astronmer can be "a respected scientist."

And, personally, I do think extra-terrestrial aliens exist, if I may speculate without actual evidence. I just don't think "God" has anything to do with it.

The Vatican takes aim at Amnesty International on abortion

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I realize that the Roman Catholic Church is "pro-life," which is to say, vehemently anti-abortion, no matter what, but I'm not so sure it's such a great idea -- given a) its own long history on the wrong side of human rights, and b) its more recent concern with human rights, including opposition to the death penalty -- to go after Amnesty International for promoting abortion choice.

And that is precisely what the Church is doing. As the BBC is reporting, "[t]he Vatican has urged all Catholics to stop donating money to Amnesty International". This is nothing if not counter-productive.

In its defence, Amnesty is claiming that it promotes choice, not universal abortion rights, which is fair, if unclear, but of course the Church is absolutist in its stance on abortion -- and this includes opposing abortion even in extreme cases (rape, incest). The Church points to what it calls Amnesty's "pro-abortion about-turn," but Amnesty's deputy secretary general, Kate Gilmore was right to argue that the "Church, through a misrepresented account of [Amnesty's] position on selective aspects of abortion, is placing in peril work on human rights".

Evidently, though, anti-abortion absolutism, even when combined with misrepresentation, as here, is more important to the Church -- or at least to the Vatican, to be more precise -- than Amnesty's important work on human rights. Would it not have been better for the Church to criticize Amnesty's position without going so far as to call on all Catholics to stop donating money to it? Given that Amnesty and the Church now have so much in common, and can do so much together with respect to human rights, why endanger the noble work that Amnesty is doing?