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Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 20, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It's going to be me. I'm gonna hit up the college of cardinals and put my name out there for consideration.

Reminds me of when my wife and I got married. She joked that her minimum bar to clear was to last longer than some celebrity marriage (Kim Kardashian I think?) which only made it 6 months.

So as long as I can be pope for more than 5 months, I won't be in last place! Time to buckle down and really pope it up.

If that's your goal, you need to last just two weeks to beat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_VII - he ruled for 13 days, dying of malaria before he could even be officially crowned. He did manage to ban smoking in his short reign, try to achieve something of similar magnitude if you want to get ahead.

Was the smoking ban upheld afterwards?

Looks like it didn't because people kept smoking anyway and the ban for smoking in church led to people going in and out of the service to smoke, which caused much more disruption so the church gave in. A number of popes preferred sniffing to smoking though.