The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church is faced with a dilemma. Their spiritual leader, the Pope, has vanished! Not literally, of course! They stuck him, like so many others, beneath St. Peter's Basilica, in the catacombs.
But one can hardly go through life running a church like this using a dead Pope. There are so many chores, so many tasks, to perform. Like telling your faithful, many of whom live in impoverished conditions because of overpopulation and unchecked reproduction, that it is wrong to use contraception. Like ignoring the reality of sexual encounter and literally risking the lives of those who believe in you by insisting that they don't use condoms. Like creating an entire priesthood of confused, surpressed time bombs that explode in the faces of children, then covering up those explosions as best you can. Like adhering to an idiotic, amoral dogma of the condemnation of homosexuality, while simultaneously attempting to appear compassionate by accepting the homosexual, thus more than living up to the hypocritical tradition of one's checkered history. Like blindly denouncing abortion while offering no true leadership using the power of your deeply respected religion for the improvement of the lives of those already living, but instead hampering tolerance and acceptance at every turn and using transparent and sleazy sectarian political methods to sway governments to implement your dark ages agenda.
Soon it will be time to stop lionizing this past Pope, whose sole guiding principle appeared to be miring the Catholic Church in the mud of the thirteenth century, and find a new Pope who can keep it similarly and securely mired. The rostrum of prospects is indeed impressive, from stodgy, huffy conservatives who acted as sycophants and cheerleaders to stodgy, huffy John Paul II, to stodgy, huffy conservatives ready to collect their own sycophants and cheerleaders.
But dirtcentral wants to offer up some nominees of its own that the voting conclave, responsible for installing a new Pope, might consider as they ponder what color the smoke from the ballots ought to be. Naturally, these nominees are available for review online, or in holy water sprinkled pamphlet form, and will vastly expand the playing field, offering clownish choices for an increasingly clownish church.