I rather like what I read about Pope Francis. He was not afraid to butt heads with Argentine politicians. He lived rather humbly for a Prince, sometimes cooking his own meals, riding a bus to work, strolling the slums for a personal look at the real world.
I suppose his new responsibilities will temper that sort of thing. It's hard to imagine the staff will let him rummage in the fridge for a half-pound of nice pampas beef, light off the charcoal, and grill it himself.
But I really don't know, of course. My ignorance of how a pope lives is comprehensive. Because any ignorance a personal failing, I set out to rectify it by exhaustive research*, namely a look at Wiki.
There I discover that when he uttered "Accepto" he was instantly blessed wiith a huge "family." Or beset. Butlers and cooks and cleaners and chaplains and secretaries and body guards -- all those and more constituting what his church calls the papal "family. "
For a life-long celibate, that has to be a little unsettling. Most fathers, using the term in its biological sense, get to work into the role gradually, learning as they go how to deal with a family, how to either supervise or ignore a forced grouping of fractious, bickering, grasping, malcontented egos.
Even the best of them will from time to time lose it -- or persuasively pretend to. He rises to full height. Steely eyes sweep over the kids and cousins and in-laws:
"Sit down and shut up!"
May Pope Francis never reach that point, but if he does we'll know for certain that he and we share a defining human trait.
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*Exhaustive research is somewhat more amicable when the weather offers no invitation to leave the cheery hearth. So there's been a lot of exhaustive research around here lately, and frankly we're sick of it. So, Your Holiness, if at an early point in your new papacy you could file a petition for a bit of sunshine and more March-like temperatures in the general vicinity of 43N by 95W, we'd all take it kindly.
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