A POPE LIKE US!

Even Secular Argentinos Who’ve Clashed with the Church are Celebrating (Irrationally)

The intensity of the news might be measured as: “Velocity of Spread” multiplied by “Amount of Contacts Weighing In.” The “Habemus Papum Argentino” story’s intensity can only be described here in Buenos Aires as a nuclear meltdown.

About three minutes after the news broke, my phone went hysterical, between the phone calls, e-mails, text messages, Whatsapp, and whatever other social networking systems people are using now. Friends, cousins, officemates, cab drivers, the people gathering outside the Buenos Aires Cathedral—suddenly there was nothing else to talk about. Before there could even be …