It will be interesting to hear, once it is determined, who the new pope is.
But that doesn’t mean we have to move all the news anchors to Rome for the time being with an eye on the chimney, get all giddy about medieval methods of choosing him, and cover this wall to wall as if this were a leading force in the world and not just a fraction of it.
And all this for a leader that most people in that denomination don’t even follow to the letter? How much power does this figurehead in a tall hat really have?
If news organizations want to put their money and talent into investigating the Catholic Church, fine. There’s a lot there to still investigate there, including peeking a little harder on why Pope Benedict was the first pope in 600 years to quit rather than die in office.
For 20 years when cardinal he ran the office that coordinated the response to the thousands of complaints of child abuse, which some researchers claimed two years ago has cost $2.2 billion in payouts and claimed 100,000 victims in the U.S. alone.
Instead of spending hours blabbering on while watching for smoke, news organizations could play the recent excellent HBO documentary “Maximum Mea Culpa: Silence in the House of God” in which the most recent pope is confronted at one point. (The film also points out that the Vatican was made its own “country” as part of a deal with Mussolini).
The appeal of pope selection is its novelty; news organizations get this way about royalty as well. It’s all about pomp and tradition in establishing people in roles that have less and less meaning in the modern world. The more they cover this, the less they’re covering everything else.