Black Pope posters appear in Rome

Vote Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson at the conclave!, said the posters in bold above a photograph of the cardinal, a favourite among bookmakers to succeed Benedict, who on Thursday became the first pope in six centuries to resign.

Cardinals will meet in a closed-door conclave in the Sistine Chapel in about 10 days, a gathering where their choice is said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and not earthly politics. Turkson would be the first non-European to lead the Catholic Church in more than a millennium if he is elected, said Reuters. An old Roman saying warns about campaigning, even indiscreetly, to become pope or even trying to predict the outcome of conclaves, "He who enters a conclave as pope, exits as a cardinal". Unlike the Italian parliamentary election, candidates for the papacy cannot launch public campaigns, suggesting the poster came from Turkson fans or maybe even pranksters. "Even informal campaigning to become pope is considered bad form, and openly putting one's name forward is enough to end any cardinal’s chances. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the posters, or even if they are part of a spoof campaign. Insiders say they are unlikely to have been produced with the cardinal’s knowledge", said NBC's Vatican expert George Weigel. “You can be absolutely sure that poor Cardinal Turkson, a true innocent, had nothing to do with this” he said. Despite all the fevered speculation about who might succeed Pope Benedict XVI, David Gibson wrote for The Washington Post that one possibility seems particularly tantalizing: that the conclave could elect an African to be the first black pontiff in the nearly 2,000-year history of the papacy. "But in all that time has there really never been a black pope? Or an African pope? It depends on what you mean by 'black' and by 'African', and answering those questions requires a bit of ancient history and some modern context", he said. While news media throughout the world continue to speculate about the possibility of a first black pope, only very few stories bother to add the qualifier 'in modern history' or 'in more than 1,500 years'. If you’re curious, the leading historian of African American Catholic history, Benedictine Brother Cyprian Davis of St. Meinrad School of Theology, provides a helpful overview of the three African popes we have had so far: St. Victor I (ca. 186-198), Pope St. Miltiades (311-14), and Pope St. Gelasius (492-496), said The US Catholic. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana is not "running" for pope but he clearly has supporters who think enough of him that they have plastered the posters over banners which had been used for candidates in Italian elections earlier this week.