As opposed to all those young, fit, and healthy popes that there have been?
Pope Benedict the 9th was around was uh... pope-ified? Papaled? Mitred? What ever the verb is, he was around 20 or so when he became a pope. Also, his wiki page is quite the entertaining read.
On another note, Popes have a much higher life expectancy (averaging around 80 years or so, 1700 to present) than other well-to-do males during that time period. There is a really good reason for this, but I'm curious to see if any of you AG-ers are clever enough to figure it out (its actually not that tricky).
On a more relevant note: I wonder what stance Francis will take on the increasingly staggering number of scandals the Catholic Church is wrapped up in? Will he go down in history as a reformer, or will he just try to sweep everything under the carpet?
