We Gotta Talk About The Pope

This morning I watched the Pope’s funeral.

Well, that’s only halfway true, and I don’t want to lie about the Pope, so I’ll be honest. This morning I sat on my couch at 4AM taking micro-naps while the Pope’s funeral was on TV.

If you’re not Catholic, it’s hard to overstate how big of a deal the Pope dying is. There are 1.4 billion Catholics, and the one thing they all have in common is that they think about 1.0 billion of those Catholics aren’t Catholic and really shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves Catholic. So when you get something that unites all of Catholicism around the world¹ , it’s a real lifelong memory moment. There are even entire betting markets around it when it happens… although upon some light googling it seems like the Irish gambling site “PaddyPower.com” is the only place that sets the gambling odds the rest of the world uses to bet. If you’re thinking of throwing some money down, which I’m told is allowed in Church rules, you should know Benedict got 9-2 odds and Francis had a 4% chance.