I was epopping with my pals Max and JK about the Pope Carnivale that just ended, and the investiture of Cardinal Ratz as Papa Bennie. So I started looking up the history of why Ratz would have chosen Benedict as his name.

For example, my memory tell me that the recently deceased JP Dos chose that name because Juan Paul Uno, his immediate predecessor, had had such a short term (33 Days) and the name deserved a longer tryout. So that led to 27 years of a Pope named John Paul.

Back to Benedict. Wikipedia provided a convenient list of all the Popes (and antiPopes), and even a specific list of Pope Benedicts. Obviously, Bennies 14 and 15 seem to have the most immediate resonance with someone like Cardinal Ratz, and make for a reasonable journalistic contrast: pacifist (15) versus power monger (14).

But what if 14 and 15 have nothing to do with Cardinal Ratz's choice? What if it's some other Benedict? So I think I'll break up the next few posts into Crazy Pope Stories, starting with stories coming out of the previous 15 Benedicts.