hubbub over hubbub

I'm prone to unnecessarily unruly opinions. On Tuesday night I lost my temper about the pope: "I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE POPE. THE MEDIA NEEDS TO STOP OBSESSING OVER PEOPLE WHO COMMUNICATE VIA SMOKE SIGNAL," I ranted while we cooked dinner (Jake made beef bourguignon- Julia Child's beef bourguignon- using this recipe and it was stupid, insanely, painfully good).

And I really didn't care about the smoke signal hubbub, until Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina chose to be named Pope Francis. 

Saint Francis of Assisi is a personal favorite. He was a dear friend of mine in college, during my nearly-converting-to-orthodox-christianity days. And despite the fact that in my senior year of college I shaved my head and threw up my hands at the church, Francis consistently remained an icon. He has since too. No matter where I've stood on the spectrum of orthodoxy-->shaved head, I've loved him.

I can't help but imagine my scrawny, battered, tatter-clad friend shuffling into the Vatican and questioning the whole smoke signal charade.

I also can't help but think of Thomas Celano, a member of the Franciscan order in the very early 1200s, who wrote the first biography of Saint Francis of Assisi. Here he's writing about Francis and the first members of the order: "they sought rather to be where they might suffer persecution of their bodies than where they might be lifted up by the favor of the world..."(Volume I of Omnibus of Sources, chapter XV, First Life). 

Yet, maybe Pope Francis will surprise me. Could it be that this will be a change relevant beyond the Vatican? Or that this change will be, better yet, worth all the media chatter? Or, best of all, a change worthy of Saint Francis of Assisi's name? For now I just know that I'm taking a hiatus from listening to the news during my commute. Audiobooks and podcasts don't tend to make me rant during dinner prep. 

**I know there's another Saint Francis- the Spaniard who founded the Jesuit order- and it is just as likely, if not absolutely obvious, that the Cardinal considered both these men before taking their name for his papacy. I'm not friends with that Saint Francis though.