The pope has resigned.
That’s it. Don’t really have anything more to add at this point, just figured it might be a while before I ever get to write that again (e.g., maybe 600 years or so…).
In the meantime a here are number of references for those looking for information on how popes are elected:
- Lee Sigelman (with then GWU colleagues Forrest Malzman and Melissa Schwartzberg) in “Vox Populi, Vox Dei, Vox Sagittae” on the last papal election. [h/t to @kwcollins] (Update: There is now a nice summary of this piece up on WONKBLOG at The Washington Post.)
- Political scientists Bernie Groffman mentions papal elections in his Electoral Studies article “A taxonomy of runoff methods“
- BBC report on new papal voting rules [h/t to @kwcollins]
- The Journal of Interdisciplinary History has an article called “Electing Popes: Approval Balloting and Qualified Majority Rule“. (For the record, I found this one myself before @kwcollins tweeted about it!)
- A book entitled “Selecting the Pope: Uncovering the Mysteries of Papal Elections”is available at Amazon.com at a bargain price! (Wonder how long it will take Amazon to up the price…).
- Duck of Minerva has a similar post to this one, but with some quotes as well.
[Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]
