(np) New Pope?

[Michael Bailey]

in human interest's interest, let me just say that I do sympathize
with his health problems and hope he has a nice retirement, full of
beneficent illuminations, happy memories, and merciful manifestations
of truth and love.

like football, Catholicism seems to me fraught with various types of
excess, contending strenuously over things that to an outsider often
conjure the reaction "a game not worth the candle", overly rough on
its practitioners, consuming time and energy that might be better
expended and glorifying various forms of antisocial behavior while
proclaiming itself a fount of good sportspersonship - yet I'm not
immune to a beautiful pass play or run (especially in the absence of
hurtful tackling, eg, although I guess that's always present in the
backfield, isn't it?) or the appeal of a stained glass window, the
concept of forgiveness, a tuneful hymn, a well-wrought argument, a
tradition of scholarship...