Short News Break

I know I just finished telling you all about I will be sticking with my bucket list theme for the blog, but that’s not exactly true… I will still be throwing in the occasional news update in order to keep up with my special project, which is to watch the news at least an hour a week in order to stay up with current events and improve my writing.

So anyway, when I was watching the news this week I learned how the Pope is elected, which I thought was extremely interesting! I’ve been a member of the LDS Church my whole life so I know a lot about it but I don’t know much about any other religion. For those of you who may be uninformed like me, here’s one thing I found interesting: after each round of voting in the Vatican they burn the votes. When there isn’t a 2/3^rds majority vote they add a chemical to the voting slips in order to make the smoke turn black, signifying that a decision on the new pope has not been reached. Then when a consensus is finally made the Vatican burns the votes again, but this time without the special chemical, letting off a white smoke, letting the crowd waiting outside know that a new pope has been chosen.