Me? The new Pope?

Who knew?

 

–          It’s almost as though you can see yourself falling off.

–          Exactly!

–          And, yes, if you keep going forward, of course you can’t fall off, but it’s just knowing…

–          …. that you have to keep going, yes.

–          … that’s it. You can’t let up. You have to be moving, and you have to be thinking about where you’re moving to.

–          It’s not easy.

–          I know, but the thing is, it must be! Everyone else can do it, but not me!

–          I know exactly what you mean.

 

This is an extract from a conversation I had this afternoon with Francis. He’s the new Pope, you know. You might think it strange that I should be having a chat with the Pope but, you’ll never guess what happened, I got a call from the Vatican on Wednesday afternoon saying that I’d been chosen to be the new Pope! Imagine my surprise! I quickly pointed out the curia’s mistake and they were profuse with their apologies.

I seized the opportunity to invite the to-be-elected Pope to be interviewed for this Blog and of course the cardinals were hardly in a position to deny me anything, so sure enough, shortly after Jorge was sworn in – swapping his name for Francis – he and I sat down for a bite to eat and a few beers.

And it turns out that he’s a really nice guy. Amazingly, we have quite a lot of stuff in common, such as:

Neither of us can ride a bicycle. (Hence the opening snatch of conversation.)

Our favourite author is Dostoyevsky.

We use the same brand of herbal toothpaste.

We are both huge fans of Claudette Colbert and Myrna Loy.

We were both stunned to hear we’d been chosen to be the Pope.

Naturally there are other areas where we diverge. I would have thought that, being Argentinean, Francis would be at least slightly addicted to corned beef but no, he spurns it. We didn’t discuss much in the way of religious dogma… I could sense a schism coming on so I left it at that.

Musically, his tastes range from Sr Chinarro to My Bloody Valentine, encompassing Debussy and Springsteen. Catholic tastes, indeed. I met him half way, shall we say.

He seemed like un tío legal, as we say. A decent bloke. I wish him well. Not an easy job, and to think they nearly gave it to me! Vatileaks indeed! Ha! God help us.