and thats the second graph improved with suggestions people made there. So i thought it was worth reposting here as this one is better.
If you go back far enough, you get popes who were selected from nobility because of their political value to the Church. They were less concerned about age and experience and more concerned about power.
As a matter of fact, there were a lot of popes who were selected in absentia. And then they were randomly told, “Hey, we voted you in as pope. Get your ass down here or you’re going to hell.” Some of them went reluctantly. Many weren’t even priests.
Nowadays, the papacy is CEO of the Catholic Church and that’s pretty much it. It’s a position you work your way up to, so by that point you’re much older.
Well… he is younger now than a lot of folks ever lived to experience Pope to be. Take people born in the 90’s and later. JP2 was over 70 at any point in their lives and later new popes were in their late 70’s when elected.
And sure, 69 is not super early or anything for Leo 14 when compared to his predecessors. But for people alive today, this is youngest pope they got to experience so they will claim he is younger and they are also right.
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I saw boomers saying they were surprised at how the pope was younger than them. But he seems average for recent times.
Code and data at
[https://gist.github.com/cavedave/5cb6c262238828ee8d02232833d7604f](https://gist.github.com/cavedave/5cb6c262238828ee8d02232833d7604f)
I posted about pope lifespans here a few days ago [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1kjg4mf/oc_is_the_pope_getting_younger/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1kjg4mf/oc_is_the_pope_getting_younger/)
and thats the second graph improved with suggestions people made there. So i thought it was worth reposting here as this one is better.
If you go back far enough, you get popes who were selected from nobility because of their political value to the Church. They were less concerned about age and experience and more concerned about power.
As a matter of fact, there were a lot of popes who were selected in absentia. And then they were randomly told, “Hey, we voted you in as pope. Get your ass down here or you’re going to hell.” Some of them went reluctantly. Many weren’t even priests.
Nowadays, the papacy is CEO of the Catholic Church and that’s pretty much it. It’s a position you work your way up to, so by that point you’re much older.
Well… he is younger now than a lot of folks ever lived to experience Pope to be. Take people born in the 90’s and later. JP2 was over 70 at any point in their lives and later new popes were in their late 70’s when elected.
And sure, 69 is not super early or anything for Leo 14 when compared to his predecessors. But for people alive today, this is youngest pope they got to experience so they will claim he is younger and they are also right.
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