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The pope became pope four years before I was born, and despite the fact that I knew that popes change all the time, it seemed like he was always pope. So it seems weird to me that soon someone else will be pope. I heard today that this pope has been seen in person by more people than any pope in history. Well, I'm one of them. In ninth grade, I went to Europe with my French class, and we spent a few days in Rome. We went to Vatican City a couple of times, one of which was on Palm Sunday, and the pope came out and blessed everyone. I always thought that was funny, since I was an atheist at the time. (I'm still an atheist, I suppose, depending on your definition.) So that's my pope story.
I'm hoping that the next pope will be a little more liberal. I agreed with this one on a few things (evolution, the death penalty, helping the poor, consumerism). But I disagreed with him on a lot of things (abortion, euthanasia, women's rights, queer rights, birth control, etc., not to mention basic theological differences). I just don't understand how anyone can oppose birth control in this day and age, with such a huge population problem. And they really need to get rid of the celibacy rule for priests--it was originally done to keep priests from giving church land to their sons, and now it's just attracting pedophiles to the priesthood. The problem with the church--with most organized religions, actually--is that they don't want to adapt to a changing society. But they're going to have to, if they want to survive.
