Habemus Papam!

With all the channels now available on our satellite dish, it was hard to decide which one to watch as soon as The Drudge Report put up a siren and headlined, "Habemus Papam!"

I sampled several news channels while we waited for the name.  CNN, France 24, EuroNews, BBC Worldnews and Al Jazeera English all treated the story as "breaking news."  Noursat, a Christian broadcasting network based in Lebanon was also on top of the story.  Regular Al Jazeera, Jerusalem News and the Chinese news channels ignored the drama. 

The Egyptian channel, Nile News, appeared to be running a cartoon (Why is a news channel running a cartoon?  It's Egypt.  What can I say.) and so they split-screened their coverage.


Al Jazeera English really wants to run with the big dogs, so I gave them the opportunity to tell me the story.  They had their ace war correspondent, Hoda Abdel-Hamid on site at the Vatican.  She was accompanied by the requisite good-looking, Roman-collared "color analyst."


I didn't catch the priest's name but he was doing a good job of explaining the universality of the church in several senses as Hoda interrupted to announce they were cutting away to the "habem popem" announcement.  That rumbling sound you heard next was my high school Latin teachers rolling over in their graves.  But, Hoda's high school probably didn't offer four years of Latin and even this morning's Wall Street Journal had to appologize for misspelling "papam" as "papem". 


I went to the BBC for the remaining coverage, but checked back with Al Jazeera English when Pope Francis was in sight.