He means to cheat the silver hammer
So it’s only been what? Eight years? That’s not very long is it? How does that compare to other popes?
Oooh, no, you won’t get away from Maxwell that easily… He will track you and find you, oh my yes… >:-)
Well, if you compare him to John Paul I, he has had a nice and long reign 
But, in general, popes tend to be elected late in their lives, and it seems to me that it is somewhat exceptional for them to spend more than 20 years on the throne.
So does he remain a cardinal? (IIRC he is too old to vote for the next Pope - not sure if he still attends).
Brian
You should have some more fucking respect… for their ability to cover something up at that level!
::looks over shoulder for Sister Maria from elementary school::
Me too.
Well, Ireland did just release that report on the Magdalene asylums…
Seriously, though, if I had to guess—aside from political blackmail—it’d be an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Or maybe he just wants to elope.
There’s a bar chart on this pagethat summarizes lengths of past papacies. Average is just over 7 years.
Commentators at the time speculated that Ratzinger was elected because the College expected his reign to be relatively short, and focused on finishing JP2’s conservative doctrinal work and not so much on attending mass rallies.
Hey, they Cardinals went for the then-healthy, energetic 50-something Wojtyla partly to get over the image of elderly fragility after losing two within two months. Ended up hanging around 27 years until it was painful to see him try to soldier on.
Y’know, the thing is… It used to be that if the Pope was at the stage of running around buck naked screaming “I am choo-choo train”, he would be doing so safely in the Castello Gandolfo courtyard with the gates well locked and nobody would be the wiser for it. Before Vat II the Pope was for virtually every Catholic outside the Rome diocese itself just this distant figure of reverence and awe that they never got to see or hear in person, and at the Holy See itself the Curia would run business – it was the Popes of the TV age, most spectacularly John Paul II , who brought a sense that the Pontiff is expected to have high public visibility and be seen as an actively involved leader politically, doctrinally and administratively (and John XXIII and JP2 added a dimension of popular mass appeal that was historically entirely anomalous).
Or maybe smoke some dope,
Or be free to grope
…
That was my first thought as well. I can’t imagine he would break the tradition set by his predecessors by abdicating due to mere physical illness (even a crippling and exhausting one). So my bet is on dementia/Alzheimer.
Or post in the Straight Dope!!
The Pope is setting the bar high for Lent this year
(credit: Facebook)
[QUOTE=clairobscur;15993075 So my bet is on dementia/Alzheimer.[/QUOTE]
Parkinsons.
I wouldn’t really know. During nearly all my years as a Catholic JPII was pope. I left the church when he was still the Pope.
I was travelling through Italy in 2004. The day we went to visit Vatican City was the day the Pope presided the public mass (whatever is called). It was a coincidence I was there, but he looked so frail and sick that, even as a rabid atheist, I felt very sorry for the man. He should have quit.
Wow. Right after I watched Mea Culpa, and my thoughts on Benedict…changed.
It will be interesting to see what his replacement does/ who it is.
And we Dominicans had our own very elderly statesman (Balaguer) that, in his mid 80s, blind as a bat and very frail but still very lucid, had to be pried out of power. He would have died in that seat if we had let him.
Times once called him and Strummond the oldest men of power.
If the prophecy of St Malachy is to be believed, we’re down to our last pope, who will be Petrus Romanus.
I think he’s going to move to a galaxy far far away and run for political office.
“Non sum criminosus!”
Am I the only one who saw the headline and wondered if it was the Onion? Or April 1st.?
What happens. Does he stay Benedicti XVI. Become, Cardinal Ratzinger again? Does ge become simple Herr Ratzinger again?