zesticle.com

As you’re all probably aware of by now, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been elected as the 265th Pope of the Catholic church (as little as I care, from what I understand they couldn’t have elected a less progressive pontiff if their afterlives depended on it). After being elected, he named himself Pope Benedict XVI. Seeing as how John Paul II was Pope from the time I was born until he just died, I wasn’t aware that a Pope could just assign himself a new name.

I wonder if this guy, in the days leading up to his election, sat around thinking about how sweet it would be if he won and what bitchin’ Pope name he was planning on using. The whole thing just seems very comical to me, like a bunch of teenage kids sitting in a garage trying to come up with a cool name for their band. Maybe he had a handful of names that were just too sweet to decide on, so he put them in the giant Pope hat and picked one out and got Benedict XVI. Rock on, new Pope. Rock on.