Will the next pope be a blogger?

The pope-as-blogger idea might not be so outlandish. We don’t mean the conclave of cardinals will pick someone from the current blogging community as the next pope, although Andrew Sullivan would be an intriguing candidate. But one can easily imagine a new pope using a blog as a way to communicate with his flock in a manner less formal than encyclicals and more far-reaching than papal audiences. It’s not as though the church is too old-fashioned to make use of the Internet. For years, the Vatican has had an elaborate, multilingual Web site. Among other things, it currently features the complicated rules (as updated a few years ago by John Paul II) that govern the election of a new pope. If you’re tempted to bribe some cardinals to buy the papacy for yourself, better check out paragraph 78 of that document, which begins thus: “If—God forbid—in the election of the Roman Pontiff the crime of simony were to be perpetrated, I decree and declare that all those guilty thereof shall incur excommunication latae sententiae.” Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Photo: Molina/Zuma/Newscom

April 5, 2005 | Permalink