Thanks
 

Thanks for the positive comments. Feel free to take whatever bits you want (after all some of you may find your own work incorporated in it!).

I had forgotten I needed to add the numbers, don't suppose you know what number Paul would be?

James,

Ha, yes, I think the next in the series would be Pope John XXIV (Blessed John XXIII died in 1963).

All-in-all, a good and useful bit of history/background.

Tony

Paul VI was Pope between John XXIII and John Paul I, or 1963-1978.

Thinking a little, I wonder if a new Pope might have taken the name of Pius, after the two that reigned during the previous World Wars?

Adm.,

I think there's a saying that the times are delivered unto them the pope that is needed and/or deserved, or something along those lines. There would be a certain historical symmetry to having another wartime pope by the same name. In this case, Pope Pius XIII. Of course, the new pope may want to chart something of a more active course than his predecessors and might decide on a different name, but I think that's certainly plausible.

Tony

Not the best of omens. Mind you I might use that for a rival using it as an attempt at increasing his legitimacy.

Pope Pius XIII? The Thirteenth? wow.. that would be a good name for a Twilight War Pope. The Lucky Thirteenth!

I'm joking, but still... Pius XIII would work as a good omen for a name of a pope during a world war. Heck i might use that for "World War IV: A World In Flames" right-up.

An expanded version of the original article I wrote with a few more details and adventure hooks.

Thanks to all those who contributed ideas.

If we go with James Langham's Pope scenario and go with a fairly conservative, anti-communist Pope developing his own theocratic polity in Italy, I can see the Soviets supporting a more sympathetic Pope of their own, both in an attempt to counter the influence of the Italian Pope, but to build support among Catholics in WTO/disputed nations. To that end, they could either set up a rival Pope in Poland or perhaps in disputed and largely Catholic Austria. Austria, as a disputed territory, would be harder for neutrals or NATO to dismiss outright (as opposed to a Pope in a mostly communist-controlled country like Poland) and there might be multinational support for an Austrian pope among Austrian/German Catholics and the sizable pro-Soviet Italian military elements present there.

Even if it's not the Soviets behind an Austrian Pope, the place sounds so chaotic and overrun with foreign soldiers, setting up an Austrian Pope would be an interesting ploy by a warlord attempting to consolidate and/or expand control over his chunk of the country. There's a Catholic majority in Austria and Italy a sizable minority in Hungary, and not insubstantial minorities in Germany and the Czech half.

Some corrections:

Camilo is not correct, here in Italy the actual name is Camillo.

Universita degli Studi is wrong. Full name is Università degli Studi di Perugia that you can translate simply in University of Perugia.

The church is of Santa Giuliana, not Santa Guilania.

The church of San Bevignate is no more a church since 1860.

Thanks, really useful corrections, I speak np Italian (just VERY poor Latin) and do not claim much useful knowledge of the subject. Anything else you feel would be useful to add in my next rewrite?

You're welcome James!

Just a thing, why don't you change the name of the Cardinal who become Pope? As I can imagine from the pictures in your PDF, your Camillo is the copy of "Don Camillo", a fictional priest of a comical TV series really famous in Italy during the 50s and the early 60s. This make me smile and I really can't take this idea seriously :D

He was indeed the prototype and I'm glad it made you smile, not a lot in TW2000 does that... Actually all my articles tend to have a few really subtle hidden jokes in, this is one of the more obvious ones. I may change the pictures for ones from the 1980s BBC version if I can find them.

I realize this is an older post but I thought I might add that if the Pope stays in the Holy See then the College of Cardinals would more than likely stay somewhere safe like Switzerland or the Azores islands. This way if the Pope dies then the Holy See does not put all it's eggs in one basket. Also there is a fair bit of "what to do if the nukes fly" in the Vatican II documents, like ordaining Bishops by other Bishops if things fall apart. The code of Canon law is another good volume for figuring out what would happen if.

Actually, it's a bit more complex than that and worth a thread of its own.

Someone might have mentioned this already, but, if at any point the Pope is incommunicado for any significant period of time, chances are good that another Pope would be set up somewhere else. With global communications thoroughly wrecked, I could see Popes springing up on every continent. This could lead to a Greater Schism.

In my Austrian sourcebook, I have an Austrian city-state set up their own Pope, claiming that the Pope in Italy is a communist puppet. It's more a play to gain support from Austrian Catholics than anything else. Any move to establish an alternative Pope would likely be an almost purely political decision.

Good points. Here is such an even in history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism

Please expand on that (perhaps in that new thread you mentioned).

A few updates and corrections
 

As ever please feel free to pick holes.