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Progressive Christian

Last updated on: February 2, 2007 at 5:49 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2007-02-02T17:49:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

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GODSTUFF:

SPIRITED GAME LETS YOU RISE TO POPEDOM

The blue baseball cap with a white “P” sat on the table near the six plastic cardinals queued up at the starting square in a corner of the game board.

“That’s the pope hat,” declared Carmen Nanko-Fernandez, a professor of pastoral ministry at Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park. “See?” she said, popping the cap on her head and grinning, “Call me Pope Carmen the First.”

Nanko-Fernandez and four of her colleagues — Melissa Maday, assistant to CTU’s vice president; Gilberto Cavazos-Gonzalez, a professor of spirituality, director of Hispanic ministry and a Franciscan priest; Robin Ryan, a systematic theology professor and Passionist priest, and Thomas Nairn, a Franciscan priest and professor of Catholic ethics — joined me this week to play a spirited (pun intended) round of Vatican: The Papal Election Board Game.

The Vatican game, released last month by the College of DuPage Press, is something of a hybrid of Monopoly, Risk and Clue — with a bit of theological Chutes-and-Ladders thrown in for good measure.

Authored by Stephen Haliczer, a retired historian from Northern Illinois University who specializes in Catholic history (the Inquisition in particular), the game follows six cardinals through their early careers as they build their reputations, the death of a pope, and the conclave to elect his successor.

It’s complicated, clever and a lot more fun than it sounds.

The six of us played a shortened version of the Vatican game, which unfolds in three phases — one played exclusively on the game board with dice and plastic cardinal playing pieces, and two with a series of card decks where biographical information and career decisions determine whether the cardinal’s star is ascending or falling.

For instance, Maday and Nairn started the game at a disadvantage because their cardinals were Jesuit(-10 points).

My cardinal was a Dominican from Brazil and that earned me an extra 5 points out of the gate.

Go figure.

Maday was further waylaid when her cardinal fell into the “Cesspool of Sin,” for helping himself to three servings of cannelloni at a papal banquet (-10 points for gluttony), while I leapt ahead when my cardinal was kidnapped by leftist guerrillas but persuaded the captors to release him and join the cathedral choir.

That’s when the other players started referring to me as “La Popessa.”

But as we entered the run-up to the papal conclave, the balance of power, as it does, began to shift.

The first cardinal to earn 100 points (i.e. votes) would win the election.

Nairn reminded us of the Italian saying that “he who enters the conclave as a pope, leaves as a cardinal.”

We all nodded and recounted our points.

Ryan’s cardinal earned extra points for his reputation as a mountain climber — “The Matterhorn. Yeah, I did it last week,” he quipped.

Even though my cardinal won points for being a stand-out tennis player and chumming around with a couple of Opus Dei cardinals, after two stellar rounds of reputation-building and political maneuvering he began to lose his footing.

Fast.

After four ballots in the papal conclave — the last phase of the Vatican game — Nanko-Fernandez (a k a “Pope Carmen”) pulled ahead of me with 99 points, just one shy of claiming the pontificate.

But then … divine intervention brought the conclave proceedings and what had become a rather boisterous game, to an abrupt halt, when Nairn (who had been trailing with 63 votes) read his fifth conclave card:

“The Holy Spirit intervenes in your favor by appearing to certain cardinals who have been wavering in their support for you. +40 votes.”

Habemus Papam!

With 103 votes, Nairn, as the Jesuit cardinal from Panama, became heir to the throne of St. Peter.

“I just want you all to know that the rightful pope was unseated by a pigeon!” would-be Pope Carmen shouted in faux disgust.

That’s when she remembered her hat.

The baseball cap Nanko-Fernandez brought to the table, the one with the P for “pope” on it, was a Team Panama hat from the World Baseball Classic.

Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo.

“It’s always the intervention of the Spirit,” Cavazos-Gonzalez said.

They say God moves in mysterious ways. I suppose that includes baseball hats and board games, too.

To buy the Vatican game from the College of DuPage Press, visit www.vatican boardgame.com or call (800) 290-4474.

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