Beneath the color commentary on the conclave | National Catholic Reporter

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