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

(www.cnn.com)
606 points saikatsg | 11 comments | 08 May 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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afavour ◴[08 May 25 17:54 UTC] No.43929124[source]▶
> "Cardinal George of Chicago, of happy memory, was one of my great mentors, and he said: 'Look, until America goes into political decline, there won't be an American pope.' And his point was, if America is kind of running the world politically, culturally, economically, they don't want America running the world religiously. So, I think there's some truth to that, that we're such a superpower and so dominant, they don't wanna give us, also, control over the church."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-pope-could-it-be-american-c...

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bbor ◴[08 May 25 18:04 UTC] No.43929272[source]▶
For what it’s worth, I was just reading that Leo wasn’t seen as “completely” American due to his many years in Peru — he’s even a citizen. Take that as you will.
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javiramos[dead post] ◴[08 May 25 21:28 UTC] No.43931541[source]▶
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1. losvedir ◴[09 May 25 00:36 UTC] No.43932740[source]▶
Not in English. I know in the Spanish speaking world there's a single American continent, but as far as I know across the English speaking world it's taught as two continents, North and South America. We have the term "the Americas" to refer to both.
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2. neves ◴[09 May 25 04:10 UTC] No.43933721[source]▶
Geographically speaking, America was a single continent till the Panama channel was built
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3. Jedd ◴[09 May 25 04:43 UTC] No.43933849[source]▶
Accurately speaking, that wasn't true before the Panama canal was built, and remains not true subsequently.
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4. lynx97 ◴[09 May 25 08:01 UTC] No.43934712[source]▶
Well, in Ecuador and Peru, where I used to travel for 2 months, a lot of people were making a point of saying "América del Sur" to differentiate their place from the USA.
5. AdhemarVandamme ◴[09 May 25 08:30 UTC] No.43934848{3}[source]▶
How would you argue such claims, geographically and/or accurately speaking? — Other than: that’s how I was taught it is; or that’s how my favourite teacher/book/source-with-some-authority says it is.

There is no generally-agreed-upondefinition for “continent”, in the same way that there was no generally-agreed-upon definition of “planet” prior to the IAU 2006 General Assembly.

Continents are identified by convention (and there are a few competing conventions) rather than any strict criteria.

I was taught (in Europe) that there are 6 continents, 1 of which close-to-uninhabited: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, America, Antarctica. This convention is the same as the one for the UNSD “continental regions”. The five interlocking rings of the Olympic flag represent these five inhabited continents.

There’s another convention that considers Eurasia to be a single continent. And another that even considers Afro-Eurasia to be a single continent.

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6. skissane ◴[09 May 25 10:51 UTC] No.43935426[source]▶
I really think this is a failure of education, teaching kids that there are N continents as if that were some kind of objective truth, as opposed to the reality that the definition of “continent” is at least partially conventional, so there are several different values of N which are arguably correct - anything from 4 to 7 is mainstream (at a global level)

Wikipedia is helping, though.

It says (I didn’t know this) that the “single American continent” model was mainstream in the US prior to WW2, so even if there is now a single definition in the Anglosphere, that’s a relatively recent development.

I remember as a kid believing that the Americas contained three continents-North, Central and South. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have ever thought that, and given how conventional these definitions are, can it really be said to be wrong?

7. Jedd ◴[09 May 25 12:02 UTC] No.43935841{4}[source]▶
> And another that even considers Afro-Eurasia to be a single continent.

Well, as per parent's logic, that claim is out the door ever since the Suez was dug out.

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8. neves ◴[09 May 25 18:02 UTC] No.43939530{5}[source]▶
Yes. A continent is a big contiguous mass of land. There were 3: Eurasia-africa, America, Oceania and Antarctica.

Suez and Panama channels created other continents.

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9. Jedd ◴[10 May 25 13:04 UTC] No.43945300{6}[source]▶
As an Australian, inculcated with the orthodoxy that this was the largest island while also being the smallest continent - how does 'Oceania' fit with your quite technical 'big contiguous mass of land'?

If we made another small rut parallel to either Suez or Panama, would we add 1 to the count of continents?

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10. neves ◴[12 May 25 12:22 UTC] No.43962153{7}[source]▶
No, it wouldn't be a big mass
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11. Jedd ◴[13 May 25 00:31 UTC] No.43968721{8}[source]▶
Oceania is a big mass?