Popestakes III

"Always follow a skinny pope with a fat pope", they say

The Holy Father, the bishop of Rome, pontifex maximus, His Holiness Pope Francis died last week, on the second day of the 2025 Easter Octave (that’s the day after Easter Sunday, to you apostates), and has now been laid to rest.

When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, and when Pope Benedict retired in 2013, I ran a game we called Popestakes, a simple sweepstakes lottery to allow people to bet on whom the next Pope would be.

Well, we’re back. But with some changes.

Entries are now closed

image of the Vatican by Joao Maximo on Flickr (Creative Commons CC-BY 2.0)

The rules for Popestakes III (entries now closed)

• Entries will cost £5 per person

• One entry per person

• The contest is open to anyone: please tell your friends

• You will receive two entries:

  • For your first entry you will be allocated (at random, as in a standard sweepstakes) a potential Pope from the list of 15 top-seeded cardinals.

  • For your second entry you may choose any other cardinal who is not in the list of 15 top seeds. If you do not wish to pick one of those, you may opt instead to have one randomly allocated to you.

  • The full pot (the sum of all entry fees minus credit/debit card transaction fees) will be paid out to the person who has selected or been allocated the cardinal who is named Pope by the conclave.

  • If more than one person has selected or been allocated the named electee, the pot will be shared between those winners.

Questions

• Is this legal?

  • Under the UK’s gambling legislation I do not believe this to be an illegal lottery.

• Will I go to hell?

  • I can’t tell you that. On the question of whether this game specifically will lead you to eternal damnation, my learned theological opinion is that there is long precedent for people betting on the conclave, which suggests that… well, you may or not find it reassuring. In any case, the church’s position is that the sole condition of entry to heaven is that at the point of death one exists in a state of grace. The rest is up to you.

• From where did you get the list of runners and riders?

  • From oddschecker.com which has a comprehensive list. I have not checked any of the names so should you pick a name who turns out to be in some way ineligible, that’s on you.

• Where is the entry money going?

  • I have to pay a small fee on the payment card transactions. Other than that, every penny will be paid out in winnings as described in the rules above.

• What if nobody wins?

  • If the new Pope has not been chosen by (or allocated to) any Popestakes player, all the prize money will be donated to charity.

• Can you help me choose whom to back?

  • Here’s an entertaining Bluesky thread comparing some of the big names to central bankers. I grant you that’s probably not the kind of help you were hoping for, but it does give each of them some biographical detail.

• How do I know you’re not just going to run off with all the money?

  • You don’t: you’ll just have to trust me. But you broadly know who I am, and also I’ve run this twice before, to the benefit of many happy participants.

The runners and riders

The top 15 seeds are:

• Pietro Parolin

• Luis Antonio Tagle

• Peter Turkson

• Matteo Zuppi

• Pierbattista Pizzaballa

• Peter Erdo

• Robert Sarah

• Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

• Vincent Nichols

• Angelo Scola

• Jean-Marc Aveline

• Kevin Farrell

• Jose Tolentino

• Fernando Filoni

• Michael Czerny

The rest of the field:

• Joseph Tobin

• Angelo Bagnasco

• Raymond Leo Burke

• Mario Grech

• Timothy Radcliffe

• Louis Sako

• Wim Eijk

• Angelo De Donatis

• Timothy Dolan

• Robert Francis Prevost

• Francis Arinze

• Konrad Krajewski

• Mark Ouellet

• Gerhard Ludwig Muller

• Baldassare Reina

• Christoph Schonborn

• Wilton Daniel Gregory

• Antonio Canizares Llovera

• Blase Joseph Cupich

• Malcolm Ranjith

• Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga

• Joao Braz de Aviz

• Carlos Aguiar Retes

• Odilo Pedro Scherer

• Mauro Piacenza

• Sean Patrick OMalley

• Dominik Duka

• Jack McDonald

• Francisco Robles Ortega

• Gianfranco Ravasi

• Reinhard Marx

• Lauro Tisi

• Bechara Peter Rai

• Anders Arborelius

• William Goh

• Thomas Collins

• Arthur Roche

• Piero Marini

• Leonardo Steiner

• Charles Maung Bo

• Wilfrid Napier

• Italo DellOro

• Salvador Iniguez

• Carlo Maria Vigano

• Cristobal Lopez Romero

• Daniel Sturla

• Gerald Cyprien Lacroix

• Jaime Spengler

• Jean-Claude Hollerich

• John Dew

• Lazarus You Heung-sik

• Mauro Gambetti

• Mykola Bychok

• Wilton Gregory