Update: the current consensus appears to be "habent papem." Can anyone confirm that? (I got a C in my one semester of Latin, and cattitude isn't home to ask.)
Actually, I think it is accurate to say that we have a pope, in the same sense that we have liftoff, or a fiscal crisis, or 10 degrees C. That is, we live in a world in which a pope exists. He's not our pope, but he's the pope, so in a sense 'we', that is collective humanity, 'has' him.
The people who should really be pissed off at 'habemus' are members of other religions that are headed by popes. The only one that comes to mind is Coptic Christianity, but there may be others. In any case, if I were a Coptic Xian, I imagine I'd react as you did, saying 'what do you mean we now have a pope; you may just have got a new pope, but I'm still using the one I've had for quite a few years now'. (I have no idea how long the current Coptic pope has been in office, and I couldn't be bothered looking it up. It doesn't matter.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
The people who should really be pissed off at 'habemus' are members of other religions that are headed by popes. The only one that comes to mind is Coptic Christianity, but there may be others. In any case, if I were a Coptic Xian, I imagine I'd react as you did, saying 'what do you mean we now have a pope; you may just have got a new pope, but I'm still using the one I've had for quite a few years now'. (I have no idea how long the current Coptic pope has been in office, and I couldn't be bothered looking it up. It doesn't matter.)