Furthermore
By Gerry Moran
We don’t normally talk about the Pope in the pub. Soccer, rugby, horses, hurling – yes. But the Pope – no. One night in March 2013, however, was an exception. That night we had a new Pope. It was Wednesday night, the night the Pope was elected, so we were ‘full of it’ so to speak even though we couldn’t speak his name or rather we didn’t know how to pronounce it.
First. we couldn’t decide whether he was Cardinal Pergoglio or Bergoglio; when we established that it was Bergoglio we couldn’t decide on how to pronounce it – was it BER-GOG-LIO or was it BER-GOLIO with a silent G? And our little ‘conclave’ in the pub was far from silent as we pontificated on the pronunciation of the new Pope’s name.
We even pontificated on papal matters that we knew little or nothing about – except perhaps for the man in our company whom I shall refer to as ‘The Monsignor’ because of his knowledge of the papacy which was indeed superior to ours but then that wouldn’t have been hard.
It was ‘The Monsignor’ who teased and tormented us all night with questions about the papacy. “Who was the last pope?” he asked. “Benedict XVI,” our ‘conclave’ answered confidently. “Good, very good,” said ‘The Monsignor’. “Now what was his real name?” “Ratzinger,” we shot back like proud little five-year-olds. “But what was his first name?” And for the first time our ‘conclave’ fell silent. Very silent. We were stumped. Until someone recalled ‘Joseph’.
‘The Monsignor’ gave a benign smile and would, I feel sure, have given that person a papal blessing or at least a lollipop or a star if he’d had a lollipop or star. And now ‘The Monsignor’ was really getting into his stride: “Who did Benedict come after? And what was his name?”
Naming the popes was relatively easy but coming up with their real names was challenging. And this went on all night going right back to Pope Pius XII which was about as far back as any of us could go and which was too far back as far as I was concerned.
And because the Pope had taken the name Francis after St Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans, ‘The Monsignor’ wanted to know what was the difference between The Franciscans and The Capuchins, who reside in the Friary.
And, of course, we didn’t know. Which is when ‘The ‘Monsignor’ slipped out for a smoke (more white smoke) while we ordered more drink.
Later we got to thinking about the Pope’s name Francis and started listing all the Francises we knew, starting with the Francis in front of us, the late Frank Coyne, our barman, Frank rattled off several Francises: Francis Albert Sinatra, Frank Zappa, Frank Stapleton, Frank James (brother of Jesse), Frank Bruno, Frank Lampard, Frankie Dettori and now the entire ‘conclave’ was in on the act and the Franks were coming fast and furious: Francis Bacon, Frank Muir, General Franco, Franco Zeffirelli, Francis Ford Coppola, Frank Ifield, Franc, the wedding organiser, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frankie Vaughan, Frank Aiken, Frank Kelly, Frank McCourt, Francis Ledwidge and, of course, Frankie Byrne aka ‘Dear Frankie’.
Then someone threw in ‘Frankie Goes To Hollywood’ and Frank-en-stein! And we knew we were scraping the barrel then. Which is when we focused on all the Kilkenny Francises or Franks: Frank Cummins, Frank Kavanagh, too many Franks to mention really including Frank Morrissey, patron of this very pub. We were still working on that list when Francis, the Boss, as opposed to Francis the Pope, drew our attention to the late hour – to be Frank he’d had enough of our pontificating for one night.
Finally, as we drained our glasses, the general consensus of the ‘conclave’ in the pub was that Pope Francis was, in Cheltenham terminology, “a sure winner”.
PS: So, what is the difference between the Franciscans and the Capuchins because ‘The Monsignor’ didn’t actually know, thereby committing a cardinal pub sin – asking a question to which he didn’t know the answer.
We were seriously thinking of excommunicating him!
