The Accidental Pope

hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of how catholic are you here today again with your random wacky catholic fact of the week or rather of the wednesday of course we do still have our friday blog post coming out in two days today i want to talk about uh papal elections in the middle ages specifically the pope who was elected in 1334 pope benedict the 12th now there was a little quirk um thankfully the cardinals don't do this anymore but in the middle ages sometimes cardinals wouldn't they wouldn't reveal who they were actually pulling for uh you know for for the papacy uh in the first round of balloting in the college of cardinals of course we know that uh when a pope dies or in the case of pope benedict the 16th retires uh a new pope is chosen by the college of cardinals they all vote as to who they think would be the best pope amongst them well back in the middle ages i