First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV

I wonder if there is any other event in recent history that is communicated as quickly to as many people as the fact that a new pope has been elected.

I was out on the streets when the church bells started ringing here in Vienna as must have all around the globe where there are catholic churches

Probably not as spiritually fulfilling, but the stock market would be an example of that happening at sub-second latencies, every day, all day.

I don't think that counts as communicating to people at all, let alone to as many people.

What about the tickers you see on TV or at Times Square? That’s not communicating?

How many people look at those?

Versus how many people across the world are finding out about the new pope?

The point is how many people are actually receiving this information. Not "could look up on their phone if they wanted".

I used to be a CNBC junkie. Before there was crypto I used to enjoy adopting a penny stock and watching the ticker for it very closely; you can learn a lot about market dynamics when you are trading a stock where you buy $2000 of stock and that is 30% of the volume for the day. (Try $KBLB for a stock where if you think the price is too high or too low you will find that both opinions are vindicated if you wait long enough.)

And that's a million people doing that versus a billion people hearing about the pope.

(very very rough numbers of course)

Also those trades occurring "millions and millions" of times a day as opposed to a new pope every decade or so.

The comparison that I think matters is that the Pope and the Dalai Lama are the best-known religious leaders there are. I mean there used to be Billy Graham and the Ayatollah Khomeini but I think most people would struggle to name the leader of the Methodist church or Nichiren Buddhism or a rabbi of my than local importance.