HABEMUS PAPAM!

White smoke and bells ringing in Vatican City.

The right bells this time, and yeah, the smoke is definitely white.

At this writing, we don’t yet know who it is… more soon….

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

15 thoughts on “HABEMUS PAPAM!”

  11. papa is first declension. 99% of the first declension nouns are feminine. The exceptions like papa, agricola (farmer) and nauta (sailor) are masculine and tend to be jobs or roles. Spanish has a similar phenomenon. El policia is the policeman. La policia is the police in the abstract. El guia is the guide (person) while la guia is the guide book.

  12. More precisely, it’s first declension singular accusative–nominitive “papA,” genitive and dative “papAE,” accusative “papAM,” ablative “papA” with a long final “a” instead of a short one.

  13. I thought the long “a” in the ablative is only in the classical (and not the ecclessiastical) pronunciation.

  14. Wrong? Wrong? Who says I’m wrong? About Ratzinger? I didn’t say he would not be elected. I said Arinze would get my vote. (Well, ok, maybe I was a bit stronger than that, BUT NOT MUCH.) Anywho, I’m delighted!!!

  15. Good discussion. Although, it brings out the word nerds like myself…
    The problem that I ran into when I attempted to find “Papa” in the Latin lexicon that I have is that I couldn’t find “Papa, -ae.” “Papa, -ae” would have an accusative, singular form of “Papam.” I’ve thought about this off and on, and I suspect that “Papa” might have come from the Greek “Pappas, -ou,” although the double pi bothers me. The only noun that I could find that has “Papa” as its nominative, singular form is an old noun that was rarely used, “Papa, -atis,” meaning Tutor or Teacher, which would have a wildly different accusative, singular form.

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