It's a Numbers Game: Pope Francis’ Legacy & the Future of the Catholic Church - podcast episode cover

It's a Numbers Game: Pope Francis’ Legacy & the Future of the Catholic Church

May 05, 202538 min
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Episode description

In this episode, Ryan is joined by Jude Russo and Emily Zanotti to discuss the legacy of Pope Francis, the influence of media on his papacy, and the potential successors to his position. They explore the confusion surrounding his legacy, the centralization of power in the Vatican, and the generational divide within the church. The discussion also touches on the global perspectives of the Catholic Church and the financial challenges it faces, concluding with thoughts on who might be the next Pope. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday. 

Read Jude Russo's work HERE

Read Emily Zanotti's work HERE

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gerdoski. A very exciting time of the year. Elections are starting now for the twenty twenty five cycle, twenty twenty six cycle all across the world, which always excites me and I'm sure excited listeners. Ariy Sabato he is the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He's very well respected on his political analysis, though I think

he's very overblown. I don't respect him that much, but I think he's worth at least putting a grain of salt listening to. It's not because he blocked me on Twitter because I called him out for his big bag of bullship, but that's besides the point. It's worth just listening to and just seeing what he says. But he's very much a mainstream media opinion person anyway. He has first predictions for the first for the twenty twenty five

twenty twenty six governor's elections. Wasn't that many surprises. He predicted Democrats have the advantage in flipping the governorship of Virginia and that Republicans can take the governor's mansion in Kansas. He said, Arizona and Michigan are the two most competitive states. They're both occupied by Democrats. Two very quick things, and the only quick things that I really think are worth

pointing out and putting an emphasis on. He put the New Jersey governor's race as lean Democrat, which means it's slightly advantage charge Democrats, but Republicans can come back, which does a lot given that they have an eight hundred thousand voter advantage registered voter advantage Democrats do Republicans in the state. And then he put New York not as a solid Democrat state, which it typically is, but as

a likely Democrat state. And what does that mean is that Larry is looking at the tea leaves of the twenty twenty four election and the great realignment that happen and saying, yeah, there's these deep blue states, especially for governor's elections, which are not as hard line and rigid, and how they vote compared to the presidential election, there

could be some surprises. And if he's saying that, then the mainstream media will probably also pick up on that, because he using mouthpiece for what they all institutionally believe. Kind of interesting worth pointing out. Secondly, across the pond, there was the election for local governments, for mayoral elections and by elections. That's basically the British version of special elections, what they call a special election. There's no real difference

besides called by election anyway. They have the local elections, mayoral elections and the by election, and the Reform Party, the Form UK Party led by Nigel Faraj's a populist conservative party, swept across the country and they even picked up one of the most labor pro labor that's the center left party in the UK, most pro labor seats

in the parliament. In the by election speaks volumes to what's going on in that country and the discomfort and the growth of the national populist movement which has not seeded despite Trump being elected. You will always sear people in the media get a guest on from Canada who made the same claim, which is just not true. The national populist movement is growing and it's continuing growing across the world, despite how unpopular our present may be in

some of these places. We'll see how Farage changes the consensus of that country and what goes on in the future. But it was a very good night for Nigel Farage on Thursday night Friday morning, depending on what time is on your own. Lastly, and this is what this episode's about. I want to talk about that another election happening in the very short term, but very few people are already voting.

This election, and that is the election for the next Pope. Now, as everyone knows, Pope Francis went to his eternal rest on May twenty first, and the cardinals are headed to Rome on May seventh to have a conclave to decide the next Pope. The man who receives two thirds majority will be the next head of the Roman Catholic Church, the largest church in the world, with one point four billion adherents to the faith. This is a practice, the

conclave that started in the thirteenth century. Now this election will decide not just the next Pope, but the future of the Catholic Church. It's no secret that Pope, you know, Francis, was much more progressive than his predecessor, Probe Benedict. He envisioned Pope Frances envision a larger Catholic Church that it welcomes tons of people, even those who didn't have believe in the doctrine. That they had opened conflicts with the

Catholic Church. He even said atheists go to heaven. Benedict, on the other hand, believed that the Catholic Church should become more orthodox, even if it means shrinking in size, and that we could. You know, it's almost how the monks treated the Catholic Church during the Dark Ages, where they would close themselves into their monasteries, and then through the century of the Dark Age, come out and save Europe and save European tradition and then reignite the church.

There is a lot of conflict going on within the Catholic Church because most younger Catholics, especially in America, most younger Catholic priests are very conservative. They are much more in line with Benedict's vision of the church in some respects, and so are a large number of Catholic priests coming out of Africa. The cardinals who are older, many are

baby boomers or Silent generation. They are much more progressive than the average twenty year olds coming into the church and churchly life, and that is a conflict over the future of the Church of what vision represents it. Eighty percent of the cardinal's voting were appointed by Francis. That will play a big part in this. Some of the potential successors include Cardinal Peter Urdo from Hungary. He's very

critical of mass immigration, He's very conservative. He's probably the most likely conservative who has a real chance becoming the next Pope. Cardinal of f Dolan m. Bungo from the Dominican Republic in the Congo, not the Medican Republic, the Democratic Proba of the Congo. Everyone who listens to this podcast knows I can never pronounce a name, so forgive me as usual. Cardinal Mario Gretch from Malta, Cardinal Pietro Parolin he's the Vatican Secretary of State, and Cardinals Luis

Tangelli from the Philippines. Those are who the media have said are the most likely contenders. Now, of course, someone else can do it, can be appointed pope. There is not a rule they have to be a current cardinal, though it is very very likely they will be, but we'll wait and see. The new Pope does have big shoes to fill, as Francis was beloved by the media, by many Western Catholics and many and he was scorned

by many conservative members of the faith. You know, being a practicing Catholic myself, I have a lot of problems with some things that Francis did as pope. I think he was very, very focused on positive news coverage while ignoring issues that were deeply affecting the church, because he

cared a lot about being in Western media. I remember a couple of years ago I had a friend who worked for the church and work for the Vatican, and they were having the vote to legalize abortion in Ireland and I messaged him and I said, why isn't frances going to Ireland to make a speech and defend the right to life? And the responded with will he be laughed out of the country and I and I said, well, you know, Pope Peter died on a cross upside down

for Christ. You know, tell me about being afraid of being laughed at. You know you want to be laughed at. Go become a conservative on CNN. Trust me, that's a hard job. They're there, you know, take a bold stance. And I thought that a lot of times Francis refused to do that, and it says, you know a lot of I think about him. You're not brave from going to or going to Africa to tell a climate change

or lecturing Hungarians on migrant rights. But I'm not going to pretend that I know all the pieces moving pieces when it comes to the church or who could be the next pope. So I have two very very intelligent guests who are coming in to delve into the legacy of France's and insights on who the next possible pope will be. So stay tuned for that. Judrusso is the editor at the American Conservative magazine. He's actually my editor when I write there. It's a fantastic publication that I

highly recommend listeners check out. Emily Zanati is an independent writer who I followed for a very long time. She's super smart about all these all papal issues and a host of others. You can read her brilliant substack growing olives in Nashville on Emilyzanati dot substack dot com. Thank you both for being here.

Speaker 2

Thanks for having us, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1

The first question, I'll direct it towards Emily. What is Pope Francis's legacy?

Speaker 3

I think a lot of his legacy is ultimately a bit of confusion. When it comes down to Pope Francis. I think there is a certain side of him that is very accessible it's quite liberal in sort of a more meticense.

Speaker 4

But I think ultimately towards the end, there were a lot of confusing messages and.

Speaker 3

It left a lot of Catholics kind of not quite sure where they were.

Speaker 4

It's got a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings.

Speaker 3

But not as many, not as much dogmatic certainty about Catholicism.

Speaker 4

So I think.

Speaker 3

Ultimately his legacy is going to be this sort of long term confusion.

Speaker 1

Ultimately, do you think that having so much positive coverage was worth the drawbacks?

Speaker 4

Yeah?

Speaker 3

I think the most interesting little snippet I've ever seen of him was he was speaking about how if he could do one miracle, he would heal all the children.

Speaker 4

Right. He was in his office and he's talking about how he would feel all the children.

Speaker 3

And on the wall behind him in his personal quarters is a piece of art by a man named Marco Rupnik, who was excommunicated initially for abuse of nuns, and I mean not just physical abuse but also personal abuse, spiritual abuse, abuse of and and he was restored to the priesthood under Francis. So it's this ultimate kind of see moron of a papacy. Right, I love being wonderful to children, but also when it comes to abuse victims, I'm not

listening to them. So I think that's kind of the Francis papacy in a nutshell.

Speaker 1

What do you think of the idea that he was focused on media over other things.

Speaker 2

I think that there's certainly the case, and I think that you see this and some of the peculiarities of his approach to the American Church specifically, he spent a lot of time for fixating on traditionalists and whether traditionalists, you know, people who prefer the traditional Latin Mass have

some sort of scheme going on against him. There are not actually that many Latin masscoers, but they are disproportionately represented in American Catholic media, especially online, and so he spent an awful lot of time and a lot of institutional cloud micromanaging the way that these people go to mass and the conditions under which they can sort of practice the type of mass that they want in a way that was unprecedented even in the immediate post conciliary era.

Speaker 1

What you was saying is correct, there's a million. I think the essens are there are one million Latin maskowers in the world. I mean of one point four billion Catholics, there's one million in the whole world. Whistend. The style of masks and poet France has spent a lot, a lot, a lot of time saying on which when they can go, who could perform it where it could be an enormous obsession for such a minority of Catholics. Anyway, Sorry, did

you go ahead? I just want to explain for the non Catholics and.

Speaker 2

That yeah, no, no, I appreciate that, And that's something worth keeping in mind here as we sort of go down the rabbit hole. So I think that, you know, a lot has been made of the fact that Francis really did chase headlines, but I think that too little has been made of the fact that he also really read them. He was in some ways an extremely online pope, the way that you know, a certain president is extremely on Twitter. And that was weird.

Speaker 4

You know.

Speaker 2

One of the basic problems facing the modern papacy, especially from about nineteen forty on, is the problem of mass media, which allows for a sort of central eye control within the church that was previously undreamt of. You know what doesn't mean when the pope can you know, get into headlines or speak directly through radio. This is something that the church, you know, administratively, has had a hard time

sort of figuring out. And I think that Francis shows the sort of terminus of a certain line of development, which is this is really cool. We can sort of sweep aside all of the other power bases and interests in the church, and I can just throw grenades into people's lives directly by talking to the press or you know, having people live stream me.

Speaker 1

And then famously would say that when I have the press misinterpret him, he doesn't speak English, so that's why it's really their fault.

Speaker 2

Great, and this ambiguity is ambiguity is where personal power thrives.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

The fact that he kept things ambiguous and confused meant that he was that he was the ultimate sort of judge or arbiter of what was actually going on personally.

Speaker 4

So I think this was a massive centralization of power.

Speaker 3

We entered an era where we talked about clericalism quite a bit. That Poe Francis was the end of the clerical era, which means that you know, you're giving all of the power up to the priestly class, or the bishops or the administration and instead essentially Poe Francis took that power, put it back into the Vatican and often dictated from on high what should have been.

Speaker 4

A pastoral idea. So like the Latin Mass.

Speaker 3

You know, if if your if your flock would prefer a more traditionalized mass, then.

Speaker 4

That should be your call.

Speaker 3

Or if you would like a personal pre litter, then that should be your call. But Francis basically pulled that ou all back into that I can both administratively and personally by doing these, you know, speaking directly often to the media and circumventing what would have been typical channels for the last you know, fifteen hundred to two thousand years.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So the thing about the thing about it is very interesting because Pope Benedict, which is Poe Francis, his predecessor, spoke about a vision of a church that was smaller in size, but more more I guess doctrinally, you know, true, yeah, more observe it, more religious, more more adherent to the doctrine. But a smaller church, a smaller than a one point four billion dollar church. Pote france Is, on the other hand, sat there and said, no atheists go to heaven, and

let's they did. He did a lot of like touch and go outreach to gay communities. He did a lot of He did a lot of outreach towards just people who made it as easy as possible. You know, there used to be a thing like even a poach on Paul the Second where the Easter, the Eastern Christmas Catholics and the cafeteria Catholics who pick and choose which part of the religion they want to believe in, which is you know, probably most Catholics, but though Pope John Paul

the second major overage to them. Francis was like, let's go past the cafeteria and see if anyone's in the gym, and they'll be included in it too. The next pope has a big choice in this in the idea of what kind of church is he going to reform? And I want to go over the idea of who's going to replace him? But before I do, what would be I mean, is there anyone left with a serious chance who has the vision that Benedict died of a smaller,

more I guess, devout church than one that Francis had. Emily, why don't you go first, then we'll go to June.

Speaker 3

There are certainly cardinals in the church who have more of a Benedict style approach.

Speaker 4

I think Burke and Sarah.

Speaker 3

Whether they have a chance of becoming pope is another matter altogether. They're certainly at the very edge of voting. Both are seventy eight seventy nine, and there are certainly other more conservative style cardinals who have the opportunity.

Speaker 1

We have.

Speaker 4

Also, we have to remember that even while.

Speaker 3

Francis was trying to reform everything, these reforms never really happened.

Speaker 4

On his watch.

Speaker 3

The things that they wanted quite badly, the synod and senidality, and the idea of getting married priests and the amazon and women deacons, they fell flat because ultimately the administration also didn't want them. We have a younger, more conservative church, and that's just the reality that the Conclave and many of these cardinals who are you know, of advanced age, are going.

Speaker 4

To have to reckon with in the next couple of years.

Speaker 3

We've seen all of these studies that say the priests that are coming into the church now are more conservative, they're more traditional, even if they're open to Nova's order, even if they're open to, you know, sort of a more liberal approach to some of the dogma. They are not strayed from that very much.

Speaker 4

And so any pope.

Speaker 3

That comes into this situation is going to have to wrangle with them. And when you talk about the Latin mask and tradition, Ando's custotis and putting the feet down on the Latin mask, and to put down on the Latin mask, it really grew the Latin mask more than it did anything else.

Speaker 4

It's part of energize is that same group.

Speaker 1

It was a effect for sure.

Speaker 3

It was a strike sand effect of Barber streisand.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so yeah, but I think Emily Emily is bringing up an important point that I mentioned earlier in the taping, is is that there is, like the Canadian elections, for those who paid attention, there is a generational divide between baby boomers and Silent generation. More than baby boomers with Silent generation, cardinals and baby generations who are more liberal,

they are more in the Frances Vane younger priests. Anyone signing up, especially from a Western country, to be a priests at this point in this day and age, is somebody who is very orthodox or pretty orthodox. So that generational divide between the people leading the church and those coming up through the ranks is seismic. It's very large. So, Jude, what do you think about that?

Speaker 2

Well, So, I think that there are two things worth talking about here. The first one is being careful to not project the conditions of the American Church on the

rest of the rest of the world. The priesthood is certainly growing more conservative and younger, and the church generally more conservative than you in the United States, but this does not necessarily obtain in like Latin America, where young people are increasingly becoming Protestant, where you know, you have trouble getting anybody into the priesthood, but the people that you do have coming into the priesthood are sort of a weird mix because of the conditions that obtain in

Latin America. So something that Americans, I think tend not to have an appreciation of is just how healthy, robust, and relatively wealthy the American Church is. How we are in much better condition than the Europeans or the South Americans.

Speaker 1

The African church is really where the population of priests is growing.

Speaker 2

Yes, well, and that's an interesting condition in Europe that we'll have to see how it plays out over the next you know, however, many years. But a lot of the priests who actually do perish work in France are from Africa. They're coming in usually from French speaking portions of Africa. And basically the way that it works is

it's it's like a period of indentured servitude. You know, they do their seminary work in France and then they have to work on the ground for ten years to pay off their seminary.

Speaker 1

That's a great prison term. It's either ten years in France or you know, a hard labor whatever comes first.

Speaker 2

Yeah, So I think that, you know, it's very easy because the American Church is wealthy, powerful, relatively robust, relatively large, it's sort of easy to project the way we see things onto the way they see things at Rome. But despite the composition of the current you know, weirdness of how the current set of cardinals is composed, which I think will probably talk about in the moment, they are still primarily European, like the plurality is still from Catholic Europe.

Speaker 1

They are, and Italy has the single largest country representation.

Speaker 5

Yes, as not intended, but as three Italians, three Italians talk about global representation, that's well, and this.

Speaker 2

Is actually this is actually a very good segue to talk about the other thing that I think is worth keeping in mind, which people who don't you know, doggedly follow Vatican politics, which is say, like normal healthy, well adjusted people don't necessarily account for, which is that this is a political process, and as in any political process, what dominates our particular real material interest.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

The reason that the Italians have a disproportionate say and what happens is they are the guys right there in Rome. They are the ones who actually have to run the central Church.

Speaker 4

Uh.

Speaker 2

It is a very wealthy church in Italy for very historical reasons. And so they get a bigger say than the Africans do. Because the Africans, even though they have a lot of people, and you know, they have a lot of puts and fuse, Uh, they've got no money. They've got very little sort of infrastructure as far as like orders that have assets to go and then go

out and do things elsewhere. They are becoming stronger because of programmers like we talked about, you know where they go and are actually supplying the manpower for out of these sailing you know, core Catholic territories. But they you know, they are not strong, uh, institutionally yet.

Speaker 1

So I want it ton't just go to who could possibly be his successor, because this is what everyone wants to know, Not that we have special insight to it, but I think there is some logical people that you know, if you spend time online, especially to non Catholics who want to get clicks, they share a lot about Cardinal Sarah. And I'm a big fan of Cardinal Sarah. But he's too old and too conservative for the position.

Speaker 2

I actually think that his age counts for him. I don't think we're going to I don't think he's too.

Speaker 1

Conservative and too contrarian for the position. A great admirer of his, I think he's if you don't know who he is, Cardinal Robert Sarah. He's an African cardinal. His writing is beautiful and smart and very intelligent and very profound, and you could read him. But I just think, is there are I'm going to read some some names and then we'll just talk about I don't have any of the names, and and if somebody else you know, let

me know. There are the leading contenders, according to the media, which take it for it, was was Peter Ardou, the cardinal from Hungary. UH fre Dolan m Bongo from Dominic from Congo, Mario Gresh from Malta, Pietro Parali from He's the He's the Vatican's Secretary of State, Luis Tangali from the Philippines. And Pizza Bala, who is Italian but is from the Italian Aires from he represents like Israel, right, that's okay, yeah, okay. So and any of those the

leading contenders in your opinion? Is there any and is any of them a transformational person? I know there's a lot of interest behind Pizza Bola, first for his name, but two because I mean he did do a very heroic thing, which was he did offer his life for that of the hostages, which is more than you can say from some people doing something bold and saintly almost in today's day and age. But Emily, do you is

there anyone that you personally would love to see? And then two I would likely you know, guess is the leading contender.

Speaker 3

My family is deeply involved with Pizza Bala, largely because my husband and that Night of the Holy Supplies of People Knights or Cardinal Pizza Bala has been at the head of that organization for a long time.

Speaker 4

So I am a big fan.

Speaker 3

I do think he is an interesting story in opposite very much of Latin.

Speaker 4

You know, he's very tolerant of the Latin mask. He's very much.

Speaker 3

More of a conservative in those terms, but then also very worldly. He's very good at being at the forefront a foreign conflict, which you know he's been in the center of in.

Speaker 4

A good way.

Speaker 1

Yeah, he's been a foreign not a bad one.

Speaker 3

It would be most worried about someone like Taglely or Parolin.

Speaker 4

I think Carolin is. Yeah, Taglely is very progressive.

Speaker 3

I do not think he's in the front running, simply because even Pope Francis kicked him out of a high level job at Carrie Task, which is one of the service organizations with social organizations within the Church. He was booted out of there by Francis, so he was not popular even with that wing of the Vatican.

Speaker 4

Herolan is certainly a possibility.

Speaker 3

He's certainly done quite a bit of public work, but in the last couple of days he's also seemingly turned everybody off and then had a medical emergency, So I feel like.

Speaker 4

Whatever he may have been at the top, he is no longer. So it's also anybody's game.

Speaker 3

We've had situations in the past that, you know, the Holy Spirit has descended on somebody in Saint Peter's square and they're like, oh, hey, yes, you're the Pope now. It is entirely possible that someone could come out.

Speaker 4

Of left field.

Speaker 3

We all thought hope Francis had come out of left field, but he was sort of working his way up the ranks for a long time. I wouldn't anticipate that we're going to get any real surprises here. But it really is anybody's game.

Speaker 1

It's not going to be some some pastor from the middle of Kansas who is that's all of a sudden nominated. It's not a Disney movie. Jude, what do you do? I know you had a thumbs up for Pizza Ball as well. Why do you like him? And who else do you see as a leading contender? He's very like pro migrant stuff, right, do I have that correct? Okay? Kind of, so you're.

Speaker 3

Not going to get away from like they're all going to be a little pro migrant.

Speaker 1

Ardo Is from Hungary is very much not pro migrant. Neither is Carlils either from Africa anyway, But go ahead, Jude, Sorry.

Speaker 2

Yeah, no, I think that so. Uh. As I said, as you were talking about, there are sort of material conditions of the election, right, the sort of regime analysis of the Francis years is that this was a disco. Uh,

there was constant institutional reorganization. The Vatican is pretty much broke, like nobody really wants to talk about it, but you know, there is a reason that people who try to audit the Vatican keep getting like shuffled off the scene, and the whole system works pretty badly when you have institutional chaos and no money. So I think that uh, Pizza Bala and some of the other front runners have a

compelling case to make that they're administrators. First, they will get the fisk in order they will stop this, you know, constant reconstitution of Rome, the Roman Court into dicastrees, you know, changing the heads of congregations or departments, you know, on a constant rolling basis. Uh. So, I think that he has not unlike a lot of the sort of dophins of the Francis era, including Prolyn and including Togle, he does not. He was not associated with any really high

profile wonders. So what counts against Perlin is that he was instrumental in the Vaticans deal with the Chinese Communist Party to try to bring the church out from the underground in China, which was a huge catastrophic failure and was extremely embarrassing for everybody involved. So Proolin. The problem is he can't really detach himself from France's failed policies because he is such a Francis guy. People are going to say, it's going to be more of the show

that we've had for twelve seasons. Nobody wants that. Whereas Pizza Baba has sort of kept his nose clean, he doesn't have, you know, extremely overt ideological commitments that are going to turn anyone off. And he's young, I actually think counts against him.

Speaker 1

In his forties or fifties.

Speaker 2

I think that he's sixty two, I.

Speaker 4

Would still really realize, which is young for yes, Okay, so.

Speaker 1

In the sixties, I'm doing really good in my research.

Speaker 2

While he's while he's you know, he's remembered for this sort of courageous act. He's also been critical of Israel's war in Gaza, which you know is actually a fairly popular position in the world, even in the United States, which is the most pro Israel country. Support for Israel has created twenty points over the past two years.

Speaker 1

Here's my, my, my, my attention towards him as this. And I reached out to something when Ireland had their vote to legalize abortion. I reached out to someone I know who worked for the Vatican, said why isn't the Pope going there? And they said, well, he'll be laughed out of the country. And I said, and Peter was hung upside down on a cross. And you're being laughed out of a country. If you're going to be the moral authority for one point four billion people and have

to show something. I mean, I don't know the man at all, but I do believe if let's say Hama said, sure, you're going to step in for all these hostages, I think he would have stepped in and offered his life.

That is a tremendously courageous, brave thing to do that you don't see not only in regular life, but you don't see from a lot of leaders, and a lot of leaders, a lot of leaders in the world won't even put their kids in the military, you know, in a time of peace, let alone put that any And you.

Speaker 3

Have to remember that his constituency is the Christians in the Holy Land, which are not welcome really in Gaza, but they're also not welcome.

Speaker 4

Really in Jerusalem. So he has a really difficult position.

Speaker 3

And he was very good at articulating where he fell, who he was there representing. And there's a lot of talk about continuing on and francis Is legacy in peacemaking. He stayed in Gaza with his constituency for a lot of time and bombs are falling on him. I mean, the church in Jerusalem was a last recue, or the church in Gaza was the last recues for Christians in that area.

Speaker 4

And he spoke regularly to Pope Francis.

Speaker 3

And so when you talk about the legacy of France's tearing on, he has an argument to make that he was there at the forefront of some of the biggest conflicts, or in the biggest conflict in the modern era, and he stayed in the middle of it and he managed it.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and that's a great point. I mean, that's why a lot of love was given to the British royal family who stayed in London while the bombs were falling. I guess it's a good it's a good analogy. I have to have to close up the interview, Jude, if there's anything else besides pizza Bala, is there anybody else that you would you would envisioned as a leading contender?

Speaker 2

Well as already mentioned, I think that Carolin is pretty much cute. I think Arado has a better chance than any of the other so conservative candidates because he has been a good administrator. He was a good soldier during the amorris Ley Titsi clown show, which you know has been forgotten amid all the other clown shows of the past twelve years. Zupi is somebody we have not mentioned who is He's the patriarch of Milan. He has a

compelling non a case for being an administrator. He's non ideological. He also sort of weirdly got a lot of USAID money. So when we talk about external pressure groups on the church, you know, I think that the State Department, at least circa twenty twenty two anointed its man. So I think that he sort of has a compelling argument to be the ideological deton candidate. He gets along with both the Days and the Latin Mass weirdos. He has run a

very large charity organization. He's like Francis but also actually gets along with people. He's Italian, which counts for him. He's not grotesquely aged, but also not too young either, So I think you'd be if you're looking for, you know, the sort of if you're a degenerate and you're looking for the most mishandicapped that you could make.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you're a gambled hope, which I recommend, but I'm sure I'm sure a betting market for it. Guys. Thank you both for being here so much. This has been a lot of fun, definitely not the usual podcast for listeners. You got everything from the papal tries and effect to different conspiracies, the State Department in the room, Emily. Where can people go to get your stuff? They want to read more from you?

Speaker 4

If they want to read more from me?

Speaker 3

Twitter is the easiest place, or ex Zinati Ean Sinnati on x and on sub I'm.

Speaker 1

Jude American conservaive magazine where people go on your social.

Speaker 2

Media, that's right. The American Conservative is the real place where the important stuff happens. Twitter is where I retweet pictures from frogging and toad uh so, But yeah, The American Conservative, which is a great magazine has contributors like Ryan gr Dusky. Yeah, so you know everybay Please go read, subscribe, donate, do your thing, share our articles.

Speaker 1

Great. All right, thank you guys so much for being on here and this is awesome. Thank you. Thanks Ryan, you're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Gradsky. We'll be right back, okay for our ask Me Anything segment and if you want to be part of it, please send me an email on questions about politics, you know, culture, entertainment, anything, and I would love to sit there and talk to you about it. Email me Ryan at Numbers Game Podcast

dot com. That's Ryan at Numbers Plural Numbers Game podcast dot com and send me some questions and I would love to sit there and bring them on the show. I got a odd question from a listener who said, you mentioned that you went to see the Rolling Stones when you were a teenager and smoke the worst part of your life, which is true. I did, what musical act would you see if you that is no longer with us. I guess that is dead dead singer. I would like to see Jennis Joplin, Elvis Presley, James Brown

or Amy Winehouse probably would be one of them. If I'm in the mood for jazz, I guess either Monk or Chad Baker or something of that, because I do love jazz, but that would be it cool question interesting. Loved it. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Give us a five star review if you're feeling generous, and I will speak to you all on Thursday. Thank you.

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