The Pope at the steering wheel of the latest Ferrari sports car

This must be an American Pope! 😊 What was the point of his demonstration?

Source

The First American Pope Takes on US President Trump with Palki Sharma

Apparently, the new Pope is a lefty and/or is he aping his predecessor Pope Francis? I miss the Polish Pope John Paul II!

Palki Sharma suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

King Charles and Pope Leo XIV prayed side by side in the Sistine Chapel. Really!

Is this the best these two dudes can come up with? Not exactly earth-shattering!

Has the British royalty reached a low point? Given also the scandals surrounding Prince Andrew!

As of now (10/24/2025 10:55 AM MST), neither Google nor Bing can produce a photo of these two men praying together. Is this not odd! Did it actually happen?

"King Charles and Pope Leo XIV prayed side by side Thursday in the Sistine Chapel—the first time a British monarch and Catholic pope have done so since 1534."

Friday, October 24, 2025 - Join The Flyover

Michelangelo's Tortured Journey Creating the Sistine Chapel | Renaissance

Recommendable!

‘Putin Please…’: Pope Leo XIV PRESSES Putin After Unexpected Phone Call Before Russia’s Revenge Strike

Very recommendable! This is big news! Bravo! The first phone call between Putin the Terrible and the Pope in several years. The new Pope offered to mediate a peace and much more. Will the megalomaniac and war criminal Putin the Terrible repent? Blessed are the peacemakers!

Will the Russian orthodox church leaders do the same? Hope and pray!

Popemania Fuels Booming U.S. Market

Souvenirs and memorabilia everywhere! Devotional items anyone! Merchandize everything!

"Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope and a native of Chicago, has sparked a fast-growing cottage industry of merchandise and tourism centered on his historic election.

From “Da Pope” shirts and Sox jerseys to bobbleheads and prayer cards, American demand has turned the papacy into a booming brand.

Chicago is the epicenter of this frenzy, with local businesses rolling out themed food and memorabilia, while Rome sees a spike in U.S. tourism. See more merchandise here.

Vatican officials are expected to clamp down on the use of the papal image, perhaps within weeks, according to Italian news reports."

Wednesday, May 28, 2025 - Join The Flyover

Bobblehead

A look at Pope Leo XIV Creole connections in New Orleans

Amazing stuff! Pope Creole!

A look inside Pope Leo's time in Peru as the country celebrates

Recommendable!

AI failed to predict the next pope

To err is human AI! 😊

"... AI made its own prediction earlier this week—but Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, was not on the shortlist.  ....

AI algorithms can predict political elections with striking accuracy, but papal conclaves present a unique challenge. The election process has remained the same for centuries: no polls, no primaries, and electors who are sworn to secrecy.  ...

model probably missed Prevost because it didn’t consider political and geographical factors that ended up playing a role in the election. ..."

From the abstract:

"Following the death of Pope Francis, the College of Cardinals will convene in conclave to elect the new Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

In this report, we present a computational framework for analyzing the ideological landscape of the cardinal electors and estimating the likely outcomes of the upcoming papal election. We collected public textual data describing each cardinal's positions on a range of topics currently relevant to the Church, including sexuality, migration, poverty, governance and interreligious dialogue. These texts were embedded using a transformer-based language model to construct a semantic similarity matrix among cardinals.

We then simulated conclave voting dynamics using this matrix as a proxy for ideological proximity. The model produced both topic-conditioned and aggregate probabilistic forecasts of election outcomes. We report the predicted leading candidates under various scenarios and discuss the structure of factional clustering revealed by the embeddings.

The results highlight a polarized field with a small number of structurally central candidates, among whom Pietro Parolin, the former secretary of state, consistently emerges as the most broadly electable across thematic scenarios, followed by both high-profile and outsider names such as card. Brislin and Tagle."

ScienceAdviser

AI predicted the next pope. Did it get it right? "Researchers use algorithms to study political factions within the Catholic Church"

Complex totopapa: predicting the successor to pope Francis (preprint, open access)

Who was Pope Leo XIII (in office from 1878-1903)

The new Pope Leo XIV chose to be his successor by name.

"... He is well known for his intellectualism and his attempts to define the position of the Catholic Church with regard to modern thinking. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, Pope Leo outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming the rights to property and free enterprise, opposing both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. With that encyclical, he became popularly called the "Social Pope" and the "Pope of the Workers" ..."

Pope Leo XIII - Wikipedia

Where Pope Leo XIV from Chicago stands on key issues

Recommendable! The Pope is broke!

White smoke signals Catholic Church has new pope

Update: For the first time, an American Cardinal was elected, i.e. Robert Prevost according to breaking news. What a prophetic picture by Trump (see below) or did the Cardinals follow his wish?

That was fast! Maybe too fast!

White smoke signals Catholic Church has new pope | Just The News

Habemus papam! What would be his chosen name? Trump Tower? Caution: satire

Why China Looms Large in Deciding the Next Pope with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! To give the Communist Party of China a say in the election of bishops in China was a grave error of judgement by the late Pope Francis despite the harassment and persecution of catholic Chinese! My guess, is the Conclave will correct this by electing a less CPC friendly pope.

The pope gets his first electric popemobile from Mercedes-Benz. Really!

I don't like this pope! He is dismal! His legacy, if there ever was one, is more in tatters!

He is too politically correct and demagogic! Or is this old man woke!

What a luxury!!! What a commercial advertisement for Mercedes Benz!

What a sinner! Modesty is not a word in his vocabulary!

He should take an example from Pope Benedict XVI (the German pope, his predecessor, who succeeded the great Pope John Paul II, the Polish pope). He resigned, because of age and frailty.

The pope gets his first electric popemobile from Mercedes-Benz | TechCrunch "Mercedes-Benz has delivered the first all-electric popemobile to the Vatican: a modified version of the German automaker’s G-Class SUV."

Pope Alexander VI: The Infamous "Borgia Pope"

Very recommendable!

Remembering Father Jerzy Popiełuszko: Martyrdom, Freedom, and Patriotism. He was assassinated in 1984

Recommendable! One of those courageous and brave Poles, who resisted communism! He was beatified by the German Pope Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. Bravo!

$323 Million Settlement involving about 530 sex abuse victims of the New York city diocese: Sex Abuse in the Church with Palki Sharma

Bad news! The diocese is going bankrupt! The catholic church had way too many sex abuse scandals in the past. Usually, celibacy is blamed.

The pope just visited Belgium, another country where a recent sex abuse scandal by the catholic church was exposed.

Pope Francis’ Climate Crusade or the erosion of faith in God

Global Warming/Climate Change is a (pseudo) religion!

It is shameful when a pope adopts a new religion based on alarmism and hysteria! What a cheap attempt to gain favor and popularity!

Great popes are rare! He is not one of them!

"Pope Francis outlined his views on climate change in two encyclicals, Laudato Si’ (2015) and Laudate Deum (2023). Concisely, the Pope fears that the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point because of climate change. In fact, the Pope announced in his encyclicals that there is a “global climate crisis.” ...

... conclude that the climate scientism Pope Francis peddles stands diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview. “Scientism of any stripe is incommensurable with not only the Christian faith but also with science.”"

Pope Francis’ Climate Crusade or the erosion of faith in God "By uncritically embracing climate catastrophism, Pope Francis, perhaps unwittingly and most certainly unwillingly, rejects the God he clearly tries to serve wholeheartedly. That is the main conclusion of the essay Pope Francis’ Climate Crusade or the erosion of faith in God, a tale of two encyclicals, written by Jaap C. Hanekamp and William M. Briggs and published by Clintel today."

Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II's Historic Vatican Meeting | June 7, 1982

Rarely in history you have such a meeting of great minds! Together with Margaret Thatcher, these three individuals made the Soviet Union empire crumble!

Why Are Polish Heroes Being Erased from History? - The Silent Removal of National Heroes

Recommendable and concerning! There were so many courageous Polish people in the 20th century! Just remember Solidarnosc and the Polish Pope John Paul II!