The Pope - one year on

A year ago the Pope shocked the world by being just about the only world leader not to use Twitter to make an important announcement – he’s off!

Pope news!  The Pope announced he is to retire.  This came as something of a shocking surprise for, well, absolutely everybody, as the firm belief held by all was that Popes were supposed to expire rather than retire.  Following the announcement there was a lot of speculation about why the Pope had taken this unusual red-shoed step.  The common reason; being able to spend more time with your grandchildren, does not apply in this case and, if that is the real reason, is unlikely to form part of any official press release from the Vatican.

The announcement allowed the media to do what they increasingly love to do most of all, which is look up the entry for the subject they are reporting on Wikipedia so that we don’t have to, rephrase it to avoid copyright infringement, don’t bother with a fact check because in this case the more outlandlish the reported fact the more likely it is to be true, and then broadcast it.  There was also  endless speculation, especially about who the new Pope will be.  Let’s be clear, speculation is simply gossip distributed by people wearing ties.

The most intense speculation was about whether the new Pope will be ‘non European’.  ‘Non European’ means coming from either Africa or South America and is possibly newspeak for ‘Black’.  One could tell from the way the newsreaders said the phrase that they were not sure about it, is it a racial slur, or just a quick way to describe somebody not of European heritage?  Safe bet is that if it is the latter, then it’s the former too but hey, who’s got the time to say ‘from Africa or South America’ and, if you do, is it ‘Africa or South America’ or ‘South America or Africa’?  Better to just say ‘foreign’ and nod meaningfully, like you would if you were in a pub in the home counties.

An African or South American Pope would, apparently, have been a big deal, but hardly a surprise.  Whilst Europe has lurched towards secularism, mostly as a result of smirking smart-arses writing the word ‘Jedi’ next to ‘Religion?’ on their census form and thinking themselves positively Wildeian, Roman Catholicism is very much a strong force in the emerging religious markets of Africa and South America (or South America or Africa depending on your geographical bias).  This is because they are both full of developing countries where the promise of a better afterlife, possibly including meat for dinner three times a week and a whole month going by without some ghastly ethnic violence or natural disaster, is very attractive.  No wonder these places like religion, it’s just like the old testament.

Of course, the real reason that the Pope decided to step down was probably connected to Twitter.  It’s one thing to get a news report, every day, that another person in your organisation is a peado, it’s quite another to have to face it when you fire up Twitter because you just have to retweet that link to a hilarious Youhootube clip of an squirrel and a row of vodka shots, and find that are the subject of quite a number of messages referring to you as ‘kiddifiddler in chief’.  

When you’re Pope and find out that in addition to having fewer followers than Stephen Fry you get droves of unfollowers every time another peadopriest is exposed, it can get a bit wearing.  

For any figure of authority, Twitter should be treated like a toxic substance, that it is the source of a cavalcade of condemnation is the polite way to put it.  The reality is that if you attract the ire of Twitter, a river of shit meets a tide of abuse and, accordingly, surfing is unpleasant.

Being Pope is, I suspect, something of a thankless task.  It’s something that you take on once you are past retirement age (like a job at B&Q but without the benefit of nicking stuff to supplement your wages) and you get the blame for everything and the credit for nothing.  It’s unfair, and unkind, to expect somebody to work until they drop, not even B&Q do that, officially.