Less than two months after Pope Benedict XVI became the first head of the Catholic church to send a tweet, the pontiff announced he'll be leaving the position at the end of February, and the 1.5 million people who followed his 34 tweets in that time were among the many millions more who took notice.
And why shouldn't they? The last time a pope left the papacy with his life, it was to avoid a continental war. It was also 70 years before the Spanish Inquisition. There were 150 million fewer people in the world then than there are Twitter accounts today. I could go on.
Just an hour or two after the news broke on the morning of Monday, Feb. 11, half of the top worldwide trending topics on Il Papa's chosen social network were talking about his departure.
"The Pope is tired of going to the bathroom in the woods, he wants to use a human toilet before he dies," @MKupperman tweeted.
Reuters' London office offered a wrap-up of the candidates favored by the British gambling establishment –– cardinals Francis Arinze of Nigeria, Peter Turkson of Ghana and Marc Ouellet of Canada –– while their Paris office reported on the belief many hold that the next Pope could come from central or South America, where nearly half of all of today's Catholics live.
In an interview translated from Huffington Post Italy, Catholic reporter Antonio Socci said he had first heard the rumors of this almost unprecedented event as far back as Sept. 2011. A scandal surrounding leaked documents alleging corruption broke out the following January, so Benedict felt obliged to see the church through the crisis, Socci said. But Socci added that the Pope now feels comfortable that the church is in "a moment of relative tranquility."
A Vatican spokesperson was reported to be expecting a new papal appointment by the Easter holy day at the end of March. Benedict was elected pope less than three weeks after his predecessor, Pope John Paul II died in 2005.
