The New Pope is Pope Leo XIV (pre-Pope name is Robert Prevost).
1) Pope names are one of the few places we still use Roman Numerals. I saw an article that was probably satirical that Americans prefer Roman Numerals (the numbers Jesus used) over Arabic Numerals. Also note that Pope Francis did not have a Roman Numeral- that is because he is the first Pope Francis. They could call him Pope Francis I now, rather than later, to avoid having to rewrite things. (John Paul I took the name John Paul I.)
2) Over the years I have read the following and had the following thoughts (Spoiler- I was wrong on all of them)
a) The last non-Italian Pope was Pope Adrian VI who was Pope from Jan 9 1522 to Sept 14 1523. His Wikipedia entry: here. He was 80 years old when he became Pope and died of a heart attack.
BILL THOUGHT: We will never see a non-Italian Pope again.
REALITY: John Paul II from Poland was Pope from 1978 until 2005. His Wikipedia page is here
MORE REALITY: Since then we've had Pope Benedict XVI (Germany), Pope Francis I (Argentina),and Pope Leo XIV (America). I now wonder if we will ever have an Italian Pope again but I make no predictions.
b) There will never be an American Pope because people think that America already has to much power and if there ever was an American Pope then people would think it was engineered by the CIA.
BILL THOUGHT: That sounded correct to me. Not that the election would be engineered by the CIA, but that people would think that.
REALITY: Pope Leo XIV is American. Some MAGA people are calling Pope Leo a Woke Marxist Pope (see here). Not the type the CIA would install.
QUESTION: How much power does the Pope really have? I ask non-rhetorically as always.
c) The shortest Pope Reign was Pope Urban VII (1590) who reigned for 13 days. The tenth shortest was Pope Benedict V (964) who reigned for 33 days. I originally thought the short reigns were from assassinations, but I looked it up and there were two that may have been murdered, but the rest died of natural causes. Having looked it up I wrote it up here.
BILL THOUGHT: The 10th shortest reign was 33 days. With better health care and less skullduggery in the Papacy that won't happen again.
REALITY: Pope John-Paul I in 1978 died of a heart attack after being Pope for 33 days.
d) The last Pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII in 1415 (his Wikipedia page is here). He resigned to heal a schism in the church (its more complicated than that, see his Wikipedia page).
BILL THOUGHT: We will never see a Pope resign again.
REALITY: Pope Benedict XVI resigned (see here for the Wikipedia page on the resignation) in 2013. He said it was for health reasons.
BILL THOUGHT: Now that Pope Benedict has resigned it will be easier for later popes who feel they are not healthy enough for the job to resign. But I make no predictions.
3) Pope Leo XIV has a degree in Mathematics. I emailed the following to my Ramsey Theory class which is an excerpt from his Wikipedia Page with one incorrect sentence. See if you can spot it. I will tell you what it is, and what the real line is, later.
Prevost earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in mathematics from Villanova University, an Augustinian college, in 1977. His Undergraduate Thesis was on Rado's Theorem for Nonlinear Equations. He obtained a Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1982, also serving as a physics and math teacher at St. Rita of Cascia High School in Chicago during his studies. He earned a Licentiate of Canon Law in 1984, followed by a Doctor of Canon Law degree in 1987 from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. His doctoral thesis was titled The Role of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine Villanova University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree in 2014
4) He is not the first Pope who knew some mathematics. In a general sense people used to be more well-rounded before fields got so specialized. So in that sense I am sure that some prior Popes knew some math. But more concretely Pope Sylvester II was, according to the article When the Pope was a Mathematician Europe's leading mathematician (at the time a modest distinction) before he became Pope Sylvester II. He reigned as Pope from 997 to 1003. His Wikipedia page is here.
5) Since Pope Leo XIV was a mathematician, as Pope he won't only know about sin but also about cos.
6) The name Leo struck me since one of my TAs is named Leo. I asked him, if he became Pope, would he change his name. He said
Hmm, after careful consideration, I think I would take another name. I like being Leo, but I think I would want to try out a different name. I looked up Papal names, and I would probably pick something cool like Boniface, Honorius, or Valentine. But I would do the name change after the semester ends so as not to screw up the payroll office.
7) Popes did not always change their names. For a long article on that see here. For a short version here are some points:
a) The first Pope to change his name was born Mercurious, a Pagan God Name, and changed it to be Pope John II. That was in 533.
b) The name-change did not become standard for a while. Before the year 1000 only 3 Popes changed their names, all to John. The other two had given name Peter and felt they should not take the name Peter since Peter was the first Pope and an apostle. Kind of like having a jersey number retired by a sports team.
c) After the year 1000 some changed,some didn't, but the last one to not change was Pope Marcellus II in 1555. His reign was 22 days, though I doubt that is related to not changing his name.
8) Math question: What is the average length of a Papacy and what is the average length of a presidency (of America)?
The first Pope was Peter, began in 30AD.
The 266th Pope was Francis whose reign ended in 2025.
SO we have 266 Popes in 1995 years, so the average reign is 7.5 years.
The first president was George Washington whose presidency began in 1789.
The 46th president was Joe Biden and it ended in 2025.
SO we have 46 presidents (we ignore the Grover C thing) in 236 years, so the avg reign is 5.1 years.
The 7.5 and 5.1 are more different than they look since the length of presidents is usually 4 or 8 years,while the length of a Papal reign has had a min of 13 days and a max of 31 years (Pope Pius IX).
I'l be curious what the standard deviation and deviance are for both Papal Reigns and Presidents. I suspect that its much bigger for Papal reigns, and not just because the presidency is at most 8 years (with one exception-FDR was president for 12 years).
9) There was betting and betting markets on the next Pope. This raises the question of how often someone NOT on the short list (so probably not bet on much) becomes Pope. Lets look at the last few:
Pope Leo XIV- not on the short list
Pope Francis- not on the short list
Pope Benedict XVI- a favorite
Pope John Paul II- not on the short list
Pope John Paul I- I don't know and I will stop here.
Upshot: it may be foolish to bet on the next Pope. Even more so than betting on the Vice Prez nominee which I commented on here.
10) Art imitates life: Some of the cardinals at the conclave watched the movie Conclave to get an idea of what a conclave is like. I suspect the real conclave was much less dramatic than the movie Conclave.
13) The Wikipedia entry for Pope Leo XIV does not say his undergraduate thesis was on
Rado's Theorem for Nonlinear Equations.
It was on
The Canonical Polynomial Hales-Jewitt Theorem.
Re "Pope names are one of the few places we still use Roman Numerals": this is ironic because previous mathematician-pope Sylvester II was one of the earliest proponents of Arabic numerals in Europe, before Fibonacci did the same in his Liber Abaci.
ReplyDelete