Pope Benedict XVI finished his last day of popeness on Thursday. Since it's a Friday and we all could use a minor distraction from the heavy political issues in the news, we thought it would be a nice time for a poll.
Newly-elected popes choose a new formal ("regnal") name immediately after selected. Usually the new pope selects a name from a list of those used by previous popes, of which there are many. Click after the jump to vote on your favorite regnal name; we've listed only the most rarely-used names to make the list more fun. Oh, and we didn't include Hilarius, because that's clearly the best name of the bunch.
Now…click the link and get to voting.
Loading ...
As an aside, if you are interested in specific candidates, CNN takes a look at the front-runners for the papacy in a nifty slide comparison. Our favorite part of the CNN examination of candidates is this line:
The cardinals who seem to be front-runners to replace the current pope are referred to as "papabile," or translated from the Italian, "pope-able."
Pretty cool, eh? For those cardinals who don't get selected to the top job, at least they can always brag to their friends that they are "pope-able."
Well, John Paul II was affectionately known as Pope J2P2. I don't think you can beat that, except for Cardinal Sin, an actual cardinal in the Phillipines.
Pope Lando from the city-state of Calrissian would be a worthy successor to Pope J2P2.
I'm in favor of Pope Obi Wan.
I was actually hoping for Pope Mary. After all women are allowed to vote for pope. Women can be cardinals.
What they need is a new Telesphorus — a telegenic (yet Twitter-using) pope in Vatican City State. And that's precisely what the name suggests to me.
When you're the leader of — as Wikipedia puts it — a "landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome… the smallest independent state in the world,' you need to be able to project that magnificence to followers throughout the world, especially in burgeoning territories like Sub-Saharan Africa–where Catholicism is really taking off.
Telesphorus, it is.
Telesphorus sounds like a dinosaur
Well, that's appropriate too.
How about Innocent…or Boniface..? Great names… It is a long list.
Pope Onnarope
+12
All glory to the HypnoPope!
lulz
How about Flaco? Paco? Pancho? Jesus?
Would it be Pope Soter, Mayor of Vatican City?
I like the fact that someone on twitter came up with "Dowager Pontiff" to describe Benedict Ratzinger.