The Smart Money's On Luigi Casmir Jones III

If you are anything like me and have a fetish for pundits (well, seek help, I guess), then nothing could delight you more shortly after a US presidential election than a papal conclave, or, as I'm sure some cable outlet will have it, Conclave '13! There's nothing quite like getting a name and face to attach to that wonderful appellation, Veteran Vatican Watcher. (Oh, remember the wonderful days of the early 1980s when the Soviets were getting a new leader like every six months? Yuri Andropov anyone? I knew at least one fraternity brother back then who daydreamed himself to sleep every night with visions of someday being called a Veteran Kremlin Watcher, but how times change, hunh? Being a Veteran Kremlin Watcher these days is akin to being a veteran typewriter repairman, isn't it? Hey Vince, could you fix my ampersand key?) And so, I will revel in this wonderful time until that puff of white smoke appears, grateful that I can ignore the daily comings and goings of Lindsey Graham. I don't want to get greedy, but oh what fun it would be if there's gridlock in the Vatican and we get things like: Papal Perplexity: Conclave 13!: Day 47.

While I remember from my elementary Catholic school education that to be eligible for election to the papacy one needs only to be male and Catholic, I'm not expecting a congratulatory call from some secret holy phone booth deep inside the Vatican. I'm just honored, presently, to be in the pool of candidates. In fact, if you can keep a secret (no need to spoil the limelight time for all those VVWs), I know, unequivocally, who will be the next pope--one Luigi Casmir Jones III, soon to be Pope Canasta I. Born at sea on a steamer heading from the Cape of Good Hope to Saint Helena in 1950, Luigi is a true man of the world, not tied to any one country, continent, or race. Just going back two generations to his paternal grandfather, the original Luigi Casmir Jones, there's a veritable UN quorum in his genetic make-up, encompassing, but not limited to, Bengali, Sicilian, Kenyan, Korean, Peruvian, Estonian, Andorran, and West Side Chicago blood. With the skin tone of the rich nougaty goodness of a fresh Snickers bar, and a speaking voice that sends linguists into spasms of ecstasy, Luigi is the poster boy for a globalized, it's a small world after all, 21st Century. Name me another Catholic male who can be found at his leisure playing cricket between chapters of the latest (untranslated) Bulgarian murder mystery while carrying on a pretty learned conversation in Javanese with a Dutch lesbian about the bullpen prospects for this year's Cubs? After riding the world's rails throughout the turbulent Sixties, Luigi settled down for a spell as a urologist in Uruguay. His latent Catholicism was awakened with a fervor while appearing as an extra in a crowd scene in the 1986 Robert DeNiro/Jeremy Irons vehicle The Mission (alas, his scene was left on the cutting room floor). Within a decade he was ordained and became a bishop. In 2000, in a move widely scoffed at as an act of Canonical Affirmative Action, Luigi was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II. His linguistic facility and acute ability to turn the perfect phrase soon made him the pre-eminent papal ghostwriter. Among the Vatican cognoscenti, Luigi, an avid biker (both the pedal and the vroom vroom kind), became known as the man who puts the cycle in the encyclical. In eventual retrospect, his election will look like the most astute no-brainer.



What, you say, spitoutyourgum, that nabob of nonsense, a VVW all this time? Not quite, though I appreciate the assumption. No, I've learned all this from my man in the Vatican, not an offical VVW mind you, though one every self-respecting VVW prays he had access to, one Dred Gelato Orianafallaci, the most successful, and I daresay, best-dressed corndog on a stick vendor in Saint Peter's Square. Dred knows everything Vaticanal. He knows the radio station the Pope Mobile is locked on (Sirius Radio's Siriusly Sinatra, naturally), knows which Cardinal receives fan letters from Sophia Loren, and knows that the biggest upheaval when Benedict took over from JP Deuce was the command that all official Vatican commodes switch from delivering toilet paper from over the top to from underneath. Due to issues regarding my life expectancy, I can't divulge just how I know Dred (let's just say we belong to an organization whose main form of amusement is telling jokes that begin, "A Mason, an Illuminati, and an Opus Dei guy walk into a bar ... "; Dan Brown would sell all foreign rights to rub shoulders with the guys we rub shoulders with), only that we communicate strictly through a high/low tech method involving Morse Code, Tootsie Rolls, Milk Duds, and Instagram. "Why should I publish this info to the world via my blog, Dred?" I dotted and dashed soon after Dred let me in on all of the above. "Nobody reads your blog, that's why. But after the fact, everybody will. It's a win win win situation: you actually get some readers, the Church gets the greatest Pope of the Millennium, and I sell more corndogs. Capice?" Now on the Daily Beast website I just read this from John L. Allen, a fledgling VVW: "The trash heaps of history are littered with the carcasses of so-called experts who have tried to predict the next pope." Too true, I'm sure, but Mr. Allen, in Dred I trust, and my carcass is going to rest on laurels, not the nearest historical trash heap, when the world sees that puff of smoke a few weeks hence. Luigi Casmir Jones III = Pope Canasta I. Book it.