I wanted to make today as an announcement because it’s been a historical day for all of us. I’ll start off from the beginning. In my fourth period class, this would have been around one o’clock, I had just walked in, and a girl had asked me, “Hey, I think you mentioned it before, but you’re Catholic, right?” And I was like, that’s really random what’s going on, I mean I didn’t say that, but I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I am.” And she’s like, “Oh my gosh, there was just white smoke over the Vatican.” Do you know what that means? That means they elected a new pope. Guys, this is my first ever pope election. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s incredible.” So I sent text messages to my family group chat, and my mom was like, “Yeah, I saw!” And so that meant in a few minutes, the new pope would be coming out of the balcony. But I was in the middle of class so I couldn’t see, but I was in the middle of like a independent work time for our assignments, so I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’ll be able to find out.” But I didn’t need to because my mom had sent me a picture.
It turns out for the first time ever, we were going to have an American pope. For the first time ever guys, it’s like actually crazy ‘cause if you think about it, Christianity has been around for 2000 years, which means Catholicism has been around for 2000 years. And like, Catholicism has only ever been over in the Americas for not even 500 years yet. That’s like, it’s only been over here about 75% of the time that the Catholicism has existed. That’s insane! I mean, it’s only 25% of the, only 25% of the time Catholicism has been existing. That’s insane guys. Like the implications of that are crazy. I am living in the time of the first ever American pope. I also lived in the time of the first ever Argentinian, non-Caucasian pope, but I didn’t realize that. Because I thought Pope Francis was Caucasian. But I was personally rooting for the African, uh, or Filipino, um, what’s it called, cardinals? I was very, very surprised that the American guy won. I was very, very, very surprised. I think there was another American guy who was from Detroit or something, but the Chicago person won instead — Chicago pope won instead. That is actually insane, he’s super duper crazy young. He’s like, 69. I don’t know if we’ve ever had [a] pope that young in a long, long, long, long time. Because at the beginning, yeah, you’d have younger popes because, you know, everyone died at like the age of 50. But like still. That’s insane. So I just wanted to make this note because I thought it was just so monumental that this was happening, and I was in the middle of class when I found this out, as I am with most things nowadays.