Papa Benedictus Sextus Decimus

That's the Pope's regnal name, although it has been reported by Fox News that his Italian nickname is Papa Ratzo. He's also been called the "Rottweiler" Cardinal and the "Panzer" Cardinal. One dissenting blogger even called him his holiness, Pope Palpatine. All kidding aside, this pope is definitely not Hilarius.

Pope Benedict XVI is sixteenth in a long line of popes named Benedict. There has been a lot of speculation today about what his particular Benedictine brand might be all about. The best thinking seems to be that the pontiff took the moniker of Pope Saint Benedict, the second, if you're counting popes. A deeply spiritual man, Benedict II was pope for a year, 684-685, before he went off to pray and started the monastic movement in Europe. Today, Pope Saint Benedict is the patron saint of Europe; prescient, perhaps, of the brand of this papacy.

It's too bad, really, that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger eschewed the good advice of the naming and branding experts who recommended the name Igor, which would have been a first. (Pope Igor could have signalled a reconciliation of the schism of the Church of Rome and the Eastern Othodox Catholics.) Instead he's taken the name Benedict XVI, which admitedly has a catchy ring with the Roman numeral, Sextus Decimus.

The name Abnu would not be any kind of a name for a pope, so if ever I'm elected by the cardinals in conclave to be the servant of the servants of God, (by the way, I have the minimal qualifications for the job) the name that might suit me best of those available from the list of traditional papal names is Sixtus VI, Papa Sixtus Sextus. Like most of the great names we think up around here, it's hard to believe that one's still available.