Because it’s one of those things you pick up along the way, and never really stop to think about until someone mentions it, and then you’re, like, Oh, yeah. Well, that makes sense.
Spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi sought to clear up any possible confusion, noting that Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who announced the name to the world, said simply Francis. It is listed that way in the first Vatican bulletin on the new pope.
“It will become Francis I after we have a Francis II,” Lombardi quipped.
So, yeah. Now we know. Seems obvious when—if—you stop to think about it.
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Image credit: Kap, via Cagle Post.
This Is 