{"id":237,"date":"2009-01-29T08:45:53","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T08:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/and-now-for-something-complete.html"},"modified":"2009-01-29T08:45:53","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T08:45:53","slug":"and-now-for-something-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/and-now-for-something-complete.html","title":{"rendered":"And now for something completely different…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pope<\/span>Over at dotCommonweal, Fr. Komonchak started a caption contest<\/a><\/strong> for this shot from Wednesday’s General Audience. The lion cub came courtesy of the Medrano Circus, whose acrobats apparently performed a little something for the pontiff. Amy Welborn also has a contest<\/a><\/strong>, though at this point (the entries are still coming) I think Komonchak’s contestants have the upper hand.
\nHere are a few:
\n“Don’t you recognize me without the wardrobe and the witch? I’m Aslan, your boss!”<\/strong>
\n“Lion Cub vs. German Shepherd!”<\/strong>
\nAnd my favorite so far…
\n“And how do you like being thrown to the Christians?”<\/strong>
\nCan anybody beat those? The combox is open below…
\nBTW, apparently, Benedict was smitten with the kitty<\/a>, which roared when he got up to pet it.
\nHaving covered innumerable audiences like these, nothing makes me feel for a pope than encounters such as this. Frank Sinatra Jr. getting tongue-tied and thinking of nothing better to say to JP2 than “Live long and prosper”-complete with Vulcan split-fingered salute-is a good example.
\nBut when John Paul met the Harlem Globetrotters following one audience I covered he duly got ready for the photo, and was handed a tricolor basketball while flanked by towering African-American fellows. When told who they were he brightened and said in his Boris Karloff baritone, “Ah yes, I have been to Harlem!” He may have meant the Netherlands, but he had been to Harlem, NY, which is what he meant. I’m sure. Whether any of the players had been to Harlem is another question.
\nIn any event, after the week the pontiff has had, he was probably happy for the distraction. Besides, he loves cats. Papal pets? That’s a post for another time…
\nBye, bye, Lion…
\n\"Pope<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at dotCommonweal, Fr. Komonchak started a caption contest for this shot from Wednesday’s General Audience. The lion cub came courtesy of the Medrano Circus, whose acrobats apparently performed a little something for the pontiff. Amy Welborn also has a contest, though at this point (the entries are still coming) I think Komonchak’s contestants have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nAnd now for something completely different... - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/and-now-for-something-complete.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And now for something completely different... - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over at dotCommonweal, Fr. Komonchak started a caption contest for this shot from Wednesday’s General Audience. The lion cub came courtesy of the Medrano Circus, whose acrobats apparently performed a little something for the pontiff. Amy Welborn also has a contest, though at this point (the entries are still coming) I think Komonchak’s contestants have…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/and-now-for-something-complete.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-29T08:45:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Pope%20with%20Cub.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"And now for something completely different... - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/and-now-for-something-complete.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"And now for something completely different... - Pontifications","og_description":"Over at dotCommonweal, Fr. Komonchak started a caption contest for this shot from Wednesday’s General Audience. The lion cub came courtesy of the Medrano Circus, whose acrobats apparently performed a little something for the pontiff. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}