logo
A conclave fantasy game has users winning by picking a lineup of potential popes

A conclave fantasy game has users winning by picking a lineup of potential popes

USA Today08-05-2025
A conclave fantasy game has users winning by picking a lineup of potential popes
With the papal conclave now entering its second day of voting for a new pope, you've surely heard about the betting markets available for people to wager on the outcome. If you thought those were extreme, just wait until you hear about the papal fantasy game people are playing.
Yep, that's right. The gamification of the conclave isn't just reserved to betting. There's also an Italian fantasy game available for those who want to predict the next pope, thought it's played for bragging rights instead of money. It's called Fantapapa -- an Italian term for fantasy pope -- and it's not dissimilar from fantasy football, as managers are tasked with putting together a lineup of 11 players, er, cardinals they think have the best shot at becoming the next pope. The goal is to score the most points.
Naturally, you may be wondering how points are scored if only one person can become pope, and this is where I'll lean on NPR for an explanation (it's too late to sign up for the game).
According to NPR, managers can select one captain for their team and earn 1,000 points if that person becomes the next pope. They receive 500 points if they put the next pope anywhere else on their roster. Additional points are scored when the cardinals on their roster are mentioned in major Italian news outlets. More points can be scored by correctly guessing things like the next pope's name and whether he'll wear glasses during his first appearance in St. Peter's Square.
Unsurprisingly, the betting favorite to become the next pope, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is among the top picks of the game's 70,000-plus users.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The 17 Best Funny Wholesome Posts Online This Week
The 17 Best Funny Wholesome Posts Online This Week

Buzz Feed

time6 hours ago

  • Buzz Feed

The 17 Best Funny Wholesome Posts Online This Week

Happy weekend, everybody! In the spirit of the weekend, I decided it would be fun to round up some of the most wholesome posts I found this week, in order to spread some positive vibes. Enjoy! This person's kid: This really sweet gesture: Marble: This cake: This couple: This bookmark: This interaction: This wholesome and genuinely useful advice: The joy of getting a new bookcase: Moon Day: This couple: This because it made me laugh: This beautiful street: This cat: This bit because it made me lol: Being on the way to the beach and having a huge Italian sandwich in your bag: And finally, these invitations: I hope you loved these as much as I did! Feel free to tell me what you think down below. And if you enjoyed these posts, be sure to go ahead and follow their creators; I think we're all in need of a little more wholesome content. ❤️

‘South Park' vs. Trump: And the little children shall lead them
‘South Park' vs. Trump: And the little children shall lead them

The Hill

time7 hours ago

  • The Hill

‘South Park' vs. Trump: And the little children shall lead them

What does it say about America that the only people taking on President Trump on his own terms — which is to say, in the gutter — are two bad-boy cartoonists? In its 27th season opener this week, titled 'The Sermon on the Mount,' the Paramount Plus animated show 'South Park' provided by far the most comprehensive and trenchant critique of Trump's first six months back in office. The episode, which includes both Jesus and Satan as characters, brutally and hilariously takes on Trump's laundry list of fixations: NPR, bathrooms, electric cars, returning Christianity to public schools, tariffs, 'wokeness,' '60 Minutes' and Stephen Colbert. Characters also denounce Trump for looting the country for personal benefit ('putting money in his own pockets') and ruling through fear and lawsuits. In its first return volley after viewing advanced episode clips, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers dismissed 'South Park' as a 'fourth-rate show' that 'hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread.' Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone replied to the criticism with typical puckishness. On Thursday, appearing on an animation panel at Comic-Con in San Diego, Parker was asked his reaction to the controversy. 'We're terribly sorry,' he deadpanned. If past experience holds, we may hear more about this from the nation's number one amateur TV critic (and slashing Queens street-fighter), and it won't likely be pretty. On Thursday, after 250 days of suspicious foot-dragging, the Federal Communications Commission voted 2 to 1 to approve the $8 billion merger of Skydance Media and Paramount Global, corporate parent of CBS. Many believed the approval was delayed to force the network into settling Trump's lawsuit against '60 Minutes' for $16 million, litigation which many legal and media figures considered to be without merit. But Parker and Stone have a benefit not afforded to other Trump media critics. Unlike Colbert and 'The Late Show,' their show makes money for Paramount. Just days before the 'South Park' season opener, the pair signed a five-year contract with the studio for $1.5 billion — yes, you read that right, with a 'b' — for 10 episodes per season. The deal may make Parker and Stone bulletproof to any Trump lawsuits. If not, their pockets are at least deep. In fact, factoring in their 'The Book of Mormon' financial behemoth, they may be worth more than Trump himself. As in seasons past, this episode of 'South Park' weaves scatology with eschatology, placing the Christian cosmos at its center, as I have written pr e viously. This episode begins at South Park Elementary School, where the principal had previously embraced diversity, equity and inclusion — which he describes more simply as 'kindness.' Since the November election, he, like so many, has cravenly flipped. At a student assembly, the principal now embraces compelling students to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior —to the point where Jesus himself comes down from Heaven to make his pitch, even in the lunchroom. At first one parent objects. 'What's Jesus doing in your school?' Randy Marsh asks the principal. Another character asks, 'What the hell is this president doing? He doesn't even act like a Christian.' Without what Trump calls 'wokeness,' student Eric Cartman, a reformed bigot and antisemite, says, 'Everyone hates the Jews. Everyone is fine with using gay slurs. It's terrible. Because,' he says, near tears, 'I don't know what I'm supposed to do.' Jesus cautions Trump's 'South Park' opponents that, as an unhinged, omnipotent megalomaniac, the president 'can do anything he wants to anyone.' 'You really want to end up like Colbert?' Jesus asks at one point. Jesus says he only returned to South Park to warn the townspeople. 'I didn't want to come back to the school, but I had no choice because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount. … The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down. … If someone has the power of the presidency, and also the power to sue and take bribes, then he can do anything to anyone.' Rather than unalloyed outrage at what some would call (and have called) the blasphemous portrayal of Jesus in this and previous 'South Park' episodes, some Christians take a more nuanced view. Veteran speaker and writer Rusty Wright told me, 'As a longtime Jesus-follower, I can appreciate faith-skeptics' criticisms, because I once was one. 'South Park' gets it right in that too many Christians can be pushy, controlling and intolerant. 'South Park's' Jesus portrayal might be more credible if he befriended more of his critics, was less PR-anxious, and expressed confidence in divine ability to bring good from difficult situations.' The cartoon Trump, meanwhile, is literally in bed with Satan, his longtime boyfriend. The devil is so upset with him that he refuses the president sex, saying Trump is beginning to remind him of his previous boyfriend, Saddam Hussein. Satan is also disturbed to learn that Trump has appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files. When the town of South Park is sued by Trump for $5 billion for opposing the president, they settle for $3.5 million, but with the added requirement of producing 50 public service announcements extolling the president's virtues. The first one … well, let's just say it doesn't help his cause. There may be an actual political dimension to the episode. The show's key demographic is young males, precisely the cohort that has been drifting toward Trump. If they are persuaded by the episode that Trump is a tyrannical buffoon and a fair target for ridicule, that may affect their next trip to the polls. Mark I. Pinsky is the author of 'The Gospel According to The Simpsons' and has written extensively about the intersection of religion, popular culture and politics.

In ‘Diciannove,' Italian coming of age takes a literary turn, but ends up just as sticky
In ‘Diciannove,' Italian coming of age takes a literary turn, but ends up just as sticky

Los Angeles Times

timea day ago

  • Los Angeles Times

In ‘Diciannove,' Italian coming of age takes a literary turn, but ends up just as sticky

Late in Italian writer-director Giovanni Tortorici's pop-up book of a coming-of-age movie 'Diciannove (Nineteen),' there's a great scene in which his arrogant, neurotic protagonist, Leonardo (Manfredi Marini), a student of classical Italian literature in Siena, is visiting a cousin (Zackari Delmas) attending university in Milan. As the two commiserate over crazy adventures, the chatter turns to disagreements and griping (culture, language, kids today, drugs aren't fun anymore) and suddenly they sound like middle-aged men bemoaning why anything ever had to change. The cusp of 20 is a laughably unformed time to be convinced of anything, but what Tortorici's higgledy-piggledy debut feature makes breathlessly clear is that when you're in the middle of it, youth is a candy-colored tornado of temptations and responsibilities. You're the star of your own solipsistic, hallucinatory epic, even if what you imagine for yourself might be a straightforward affair with a clear-cut message about the meaning of life. 'Diciannove' hums with the dissonance of repression plus expression in Leonardo's consequential 19th year. If you notice a similarity to the playful moods and textures of Tortorici's countryman Luca Guadagnino, there's a reason: The 'Call Me by Your Name' filmmaker produced his protégé Tortorici's autobiographical debut feature and a lineage of tenderness and vivacity in evoking the emotional waves of adolescence is more than evident. We meet Leonardo as a nosebleed-suffering, dreamy-eyed Palermo teen with a haranguing mom. He's headed to business school in London, where his older sister Arianna (Vittoria Planeta) also lives. But once there, after a round of hard-partying with her friends and the sense that he's replaced one hypercritical family member for another, he makes a last-minute decision to change the course of his educational life and enroll as a literature student back in Italy. Cut to picturesque Siena and cue the baroque score. In this ancient Tuscan city, Leonardo is awakened by his writerly ambitions, a swoony love for medieval Italian authors like Dante and an intellectual disdain for the 20th century. But it also turns him into a lonely, rigidly neoclassicist oddball who scorns his professors, prefers books to his flighty peers and still can't seem to take care of himself. Sealing himself off in a stuffy, antiquated notion of personal morality only makes the trappings of real life (desire, depression, cleanliness, online enticements) harder to deal with, leading his journey of self-discovery to some internally and externally messy places. And some messy filmmaking too, even if that's the point of this elegantly shapeless headspace travelogue. With unapologetic brio, Tortorici, cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller and editor Marco Costa empty out their tool kit of angles, splits, tracks, smudges, zooms, smashes, jumps, needle drops, montages and text cards. Though never disorienting or obnoxious (à la 'Euphoria'), it can get tiring: a restlessness of spirit and technique that occasionally separates us from this lost antihero when we crave a closer connection to him. Especially since first-time actor Marini is stellar casting. There's an easygoing inscrutability to his demeanor and his sad, mischievous eyes compel our curiosity — he'll never let you think you've watched a thousand coming-of-age movies. Tortorici doesn't give his searcher a tidy ending. There's a hilarious psychoanalysis by a wealthy aesthete (Sergio Benvenuto) who sees right through his posturing. But the night air beckons. As Leonardo walks away from us at the end after serving up a rascally smile (in a very '400 Blows'-ish freeze frame), Tortorici has him stumble briefly on the cobblestones, and somehow it feels like the wit of 'Diciannove' in a split second of screen time: Youth means missteps, so why dwell on them?

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store