To the media, reduced to \”Dancing with the Stars\” after the Super Bowl and the Oscars until re-entering Eden as the Masters Golf Tournament blooms again, the gods have suddenly delivered a gift seemingly from heaven, a surprise papal resignation and a conclave to elect a new pope.

There will be a new pope by St. Patrick\’s Day, but the timing was so good for the media that you would think that, for his resignation, Pope Benedict XVI had the same reporter adviser who told Pancho Villa to postpone his revolution until after the World Series.

This papal election has everything Americans love: color, drama, great sets, a cast of thousands and, in common with \”Downton Abbey,\” the challenge of keeping a medieval castle running with, briefly, the master\’s valet in jail. The gathering throngs give off a Kentucky Derby crowd buzz as the post time neared — get your bets down now. The odds shifted every day after Irish oddsmaker Paddy Power first put America\’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan at 33-1 and Africa\’s Cardinal Peter Turkson at 2-1. If the media moguls could figure out how to sell commercials — in good taste, of course; say, the Clydesdales caparisoned in papal colors clumping solemnly across St. Peter\’s Square — the sky would be the limit for network charges for every commercial minute.

Then there is the Dickensian touch of two popes living in the Vatican at the same time, one a world-class theologian who promises, using a word that must resonate for a boy who grew up in wartime Germany, \”unconditional\” obedience to his successor. Dramatic possibilities tingle in the air with two white-cassocked popes crossing each other\’s paths constantly in a Vatican City that is smaller than some Wal-Marts.

BY EUGENE CULLEN KENNEDY
LINK SUBMITTED BY CATHERINE GOTTERT

Beyond the more obvious \”we don\’t want water leaking into the buildings\”, School officials and Board members have been touting energy efficiencies, and solar-panel opportunities.

The short piece in the Courier also quotes School Board President Bruce Darrow as saying \”The project will be completed without any impact in taxes\”… but isn\’t Bruce Darrow the Brooklawn School District President, and not Bellmawr?

I can confirm that yesterday when I voted, I had gone from work straight to the voting location, and when I got home I was amused and confused to see my sample ballot had arrived the same day as the vote… in effect AFTER I had voted.

I\’ll be the guy to say it…. Could this delay have affected the vote outcome?

The ballots which were dropped off at the Bellmawr Post Office (SJ Regional Center), and primarily needed to be delivered to the same town of Bellmawr… took a week to deliver after going on a tour of New Jersey.

I first met our new Holy Father at Rome\’s 1997 Synod for America, and still have a gift from him, a portrait of Mary, the mother of Jesus, on my desk. 

Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Bergoglio, is a man from the new heartland of the global Church; a priest of extraordinary intellectual and cultural strengths; a man deeply engaged in the issues of contemporary life and able to speak to the modern heart; open to the new realities the Church faces; and rooted in a deep love of Jesus Christ. He is a wonderful choice; a pastor God sends not just to the Church but to every person of good will who honestly yearns for justice, peace and human dignity in our time. May God grant him courage and joy, and sustain him with his divine presence. 

And may Catholics in Philadelphia and around the world lift him up with our prayers.