My thesis:

Conditional on a tradcath pope, he may choose one of his tradcath predecessors, JPII or Benedict as a mission statement. Certainly not Francis.

Conditional on a progcath pope, he will probably not choose Francis, because that would be red meat to the tradcaths.

I don't have enough knowledge to get the "vibes" of the other names. So I choose "other". If we get a Jesuit again (I hope so!) then Ignatius or Xavier would be cool 🤣

I was thinking of creating a market like this myself; but I'd have split "other" into a few distinct categories:

• A new, never before used name (e.g. Anthony, Ignatius)

• Peter II (this would be a big scandal, probably)

• Linus II (Pope Linus was Peter's direct successor, so it'd probably still be scandalous)

• the same name as one of those obscure Medieval popes (Gelasius, Zosymus, Hormisdas)

• Some other "the second" or "the third" name

@BrunoParga "Pope Jesus"

@BrunoParga could make a market on the number on the Pope's name.

@DanielFilan I think that's too tightly coupled with the name. I think they technically can pick the number they want (Pope Diabolus DCLXVI lol), but in practice I expect them to follow the existing numbering. So a 2 will most likely be Francis, 3 John Paul, 24 John and so on.

Now, maybe there could be a market on which century it was that the most recent pope chose that same name.

@BrunoParga re: Peter II

@BrunoParga the number will be DCLXVI all right but the name will be Nero Caesar

@BrunoParga Sure - it just nicely collapses "brand new names" into one bucket, as well as "existing but obscure names".

@evergreenemily @OnixarLilen @Odoacre @DylanSlagh I've updated the description -- let me know if you think these two scenarios have a non-negligible probability so that you would have bet any differently if they had been mentioned in the description all along.

@ArmandodiMatteo No change here! My only bet has been "no" on Pope Francis being alive in 2040.