How did the pope get elected?

The story in the news always seems to be that he’s turning everything topsy turvy in the curia, screwing around with long-standing political connections between Vatican insiders and the world around them, and is utterly serious about reform and iconoclasm.

And that he’s said all along this is what the church needs, long before he was pope.

So my question is, if this is all true, how the heck did he get himself elected in the first place? Did the other cardinals not know this would happen? Did they actually know it would happen and knew it was for the best even if not in their own individual interests?

My cynicism is melting. Help me out here.

What’s he doing about the kiddy diddling?

I have no knowledge, but if all this shaking up is true, perhaps it’s an indication that a whole lot of the senior church people are really pissed off about how that church has handled its PR for the last … couple centuries or so.

I’m not Catholic, but I wonder if perhaps the College of Cardinals realized that they had to find someone with no skeletons in their closet (or at least as few as possible) for at least one papacy in order to bring some respect back. I think the Catholic church is seriously F!ed up these days, but nonetheless I’m sure many if not most in the church miss the days when the church was respected and want to see those days return.

Finding a papabile with as few skeletons in his closet as possible may be rather tricky these days. Maybe the current pope was felt to be the best that they could manage under the circumstances.

He was in second place when Pope Benedict was elected.
Benedict (Cardinal Ratzinger) was in second place when JPII was elected.

It would be interesting to find out who was in second place this time.

I thought the goings on in the conclave were absolutely confidential (as in, say anything and you get automatically excommunicated). If that is the case, how do we know who was in second place?

I thought the theory was that a bunch of the cardinals felt a real shakeup was necessary.

When John XXIII was elected in 1958, he was 76 years old. Like Francis, he was an old man with a reasonably clean record, and popular with his congregations and fellow cardinals. It was also expected John would be a short-term, caretaker pope, instead of the person who revitalized the church through the Vatican Council.

I think it’s likely that when an old man is elected Pope, he feels the need to do a lot in a short time.

You’re gonna need a cite for this.

[constitutional peasant] Well, I didn’t vote for him! [/constitutional peasant]