Vatican City, Italy: In a groundbreaking move, an enclave of cardinals selected a wrinkled old 76-year-old white man to replace their broken down 85-year-old white man. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina will henceforth be known as Pope Francis the First and will be in the top ten Google search results for the next week, right under searches for funny cat videos.
The name Francis, according to analysts, is “groundbreaking” and “earth-shattering”, both words used fairly extensively by people that analyze pope history for a living. The name was apparently taken to refer to St. Francis of Assisi to indicate the new Pope’s dedication to the poor and needy.
“What better name for the guy that sits in a see-through car wearing a gold embroidered robe and waves to people!” Exclaimed one analyst to the only CNN correspondent that will ever visit him, “It’s groundbreaking!”
Also shocking is the fact that the new Pope is from Latin America, though it’s under some contention whether Argentina is, in fact, part of Latin America. The cardinals cleared up any misunderstanding about this new direction by making sure to find the whitest man in Argentina.
The final part of this story likely to get traction for the next couple of days is the fact that the new Pope is a Jesuit. Jesuits traditionally take vows of chastity and poverty, both of which are hard to imagine keeping as an Argentinian raised by Italians. Jesuits also tend to be involved in liberation movements and pushing for equality of races, a trend that Cardinal Bergoglio boldly stood against.
The new pope has also taken a number of other bold stances, such as being fervently anti-gay marriage and promoting a return to traditional values. Analysts have called his stances “groundbreaking”, in that they were ideas that were there at the Vatican’s ground breaking and aren’t likely to change.
The new pope will preside over exactly seven days of relevance, with media outlets poised to provide wall-to-wall coverage with article headlines like “Who is Pope Francis, really?” and “Really, who is Pope Francis?”. The Cardinal enclave explained to the press that they’re very excited for these few days of being paid attention to and hope to use the time to push the same agenda until people finally get fed up and remember why no one listens to the Church anymore.
Pope Francis has high hopes for the week. “It’s the first time people have paid attention to us without a sexual assault charge. I count that as progress.”