Pope Frances!

Congrats, Frances. I had no idea you were even nominated! You must have made a big impression in your brief stint as a Mississippi Papist. Can they put a child seat in the popemobile?

A week ago I predicted to a group of colleagues that the Cardinals would look for "the Marco Rubio of Popes": a modestly more diverse face (hence, Latin American) for the same old reactionary policies. My more knowledgeable former-Catholics seemed to think it was going back to Italy. Ha! It's so rare I get a prediction right that I'm recording it here. (Wish I had done it a week ago, but oh well.)

FWIW, based on my vast wealth of understanding of all things papist (i.e., a few short articles from the last 24 hours), I suspect Bergoglio will be an exceptionally good pick, at least from the Romanist standpoint. He seems to exude a charm and humility Ratzinger never had, and he's got some decent populist bona fides on economic issues. Meanwhile, he's pretty hard right on all that sex stuff, which makes the old boys tingle with repressed excitement. They could have done a lot worse. Says the Presbyterian Democrat.