Call me silly, but I’d really LIKE to see a Pope George Ringo…
-MMM-
One I’ve wondered about: In some religious orders, it’s customary for an initiate to the order to take a new name upon joining. Has any Pope ever come from such an order? Did he choose yet a third name, or retain the name he chose when he joined his order?
At least there’s a Pope Hilarius.
First time I saw this gag was in the National Lampoon, 1979, as a faux news blurb:
“John Paul Elected Pope; George Ringo Miffed”
Don’t forget Pope Lando.
You’re silly. :rolleyes:
Any choice has to sound well in Latin. Seriously.
Pope Georgius Ringus.
In the report, SDStaff paperbackwriter wrote:
But I swear on the day Francis was announced, I remember hearing him called Pope Francis I. I seem to recall that it was reported that he took the name “Francis I.”
Does anyone else remember this?
Some media may have assumed the ‘I’, but I remember right from the start it was made quite clear that there was no ordinal.
Powers &8^]
'Course not; he was a cardinal.
::ducks and runs::
English royal names also omit the “I” for first-and-only. But note that the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire was otherwise, which is why Emperor Franz Josef I gets his number, despite there having been no Franz Josef II (except in some operetta productions).
Maybe my memory is faulty, but I’m quite certain that Pope John Paul I was called “the first” during his short papacy. I’m not sure why it would be different with Francis.
That was mentioned in the Staff Report:
It continues:
which gives some insight as to his reasons: He wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t John XXIV or Paul VII, but a new Papal name honoring both of them.
He was Pope for a little less than a month, and then we had John Paul II. I have a feeling that he was simply known as John Paul, but since his ascendancy and death were so close together, we simply think he was always John Paul I.
It’d be interesting to see how the newspapers referred to him when he was alive.
The Wiki page for John Paul I explicitly states that he was the first “First” to call himself the “First”:
NatLamp also mentioned Pope Merlin, elected during JFK’s 2nd term as president, in their “JFK assassination never happened” issue.