Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is both pleased, and occasionally shocked, by the news stories being run surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II.

In a story that is far from shocking, he reads that there are lots of people (in Ireland at least) laying odds on who will be the next Pope.

Allow your Maximum Leader to make a (half-way serious) prediction. He thinks the next Pope will be…..

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Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, current Dean of the College of Cardinals, and head of the Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
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And Cardinal Ratzinger will take the papal name Pius XIII.

Carry on.