Congratulations to my diocese — as far as I’m concerned, Bishop Jacques Fabre-Jeune just scooped the world. I received first a text, then an email, from his office without having heard a word ere that.

Which is a bit surprising. I must have turned off more notifications from news sources than I thought.

Anyway, I then looked, and sure enough:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — White smoke pours from the Sistine Chapel chimney, signalling a pope has been elected to lead the Catholic Church

— Meg Kinnard (@MegKinnardAP) May 8, 2025

So now, everybody can pack up and go home, and stop trying so hard to predict who the new pope is. Or at least, they can when we actually know who he is.

I don’t remember this kind of blanket coverage in the past — when we lost John Paul II, or when Benedict retired. It has seemed, well, unseemly.

Some things should be done in private, without the jostling elbows of the world intruding. This is one of those things.

That may sound odd coming from an old newspaperman, but I’m also a (sort of, dating to my conversion in 1981) old Catholic. And I’ve got this archaic thing of trusting the Holy Spirit on this.

Oh, I may complain now and again about the new Holy Father — hey, no mortal is perfect — but I assure you I’m quite at peace on this as we receive the news…

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