c. 2005 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Think you know what’s in the cards for the papacy? You can bet on it.
With the secret conclave that will select the next pope set to begin Monday (April 18), gamblers are going to online papal pools to put small bets on the likely successor to John Paul II.
A New York-based Web site, poolitics.com, launched its first pope-related pool April 2, the day John Paul passed away, and now hosts half a dozen pope-related pools.
Poolitics describes itself as the world’s first and only parimutuel blog, “a place where ideologues of all stripes and colors can put their money where their mouth is by entering real-money predictive contests.” The Web site is not disclosing who leads its papal pool.
Five Las Vegas sports books who were contacted said they were not distributing odds on the next pope, but books in the United Kingdom show a clear front-runner. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the German theologian and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, holds 7-2 odds at Ireland’s Paddy Power and 4-1 at Britain’s William Hill.
The recently retired archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, has moved up the field to become second favorite at 4-1 for Paddy Power and 9-2 for William Hill.
William Hill opened its book just this week, but has already taken in at least $19,000 in bets and is hoping to break the $190,000 barrier, as it did when it ran a bet on who would succeed George Carey as archbishop of Canterbury. Paddy Power accepts papal wagers online, as do other online betting sites.
More informal papal pools are off and running elsewhere on the Internet, from small college forums to weblogs and special-interest sites.
Circulating around numerous Web sites is a printable papal pool form called “Popapalooza 2005” that has contenders divided like NCAA teams across regional divisions, snaking toward a central “championship” winner at St. Peter’s.
Kiera McCaffrey, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Catholic League, the nation’s largest Roman Catholic civil rights organization, said Catholics aren’t offended by papal wagers when they’re in small amounts.
“While we would never encourage it, for the most part it seems like harmless entertainment,” McCaffrey said. “It may seem inappropriate or unseemly to be betting on a process that’s guided by the Holy Spirit, but I think people’s intent for the most part is to just enjoy a diversion.
“It’s nice that people are taking more interest and looking at the lives of the cardinals.”
MO/PH END RNS
(Robert Nowell contributed to this report from London)
