Originally published at The Crux
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To be perfectly frank, I am only writing this because our Editor-in-Chief assigned the piece to me.
He was uneasy – morally, I mean – because he couldn’t see his way to any conclusion that made this a story, but it is a thing that happened and people were talking about it, so he gave it to me.
I’m talking about the election of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as Dean of the College of Cardinals on Friday.
Don’t get me wrong: The story is news.
Only, it’s news of the sort as would have been handled in a 150-word blurb on page 3 of a newspaper when I was growing up (with a photo, maybe, on a slow news day).
The Chief – Charles Collins, my best friend in the world, for the record – wants news analysis, though, so here I am to tell you why this isn’t much of a story.
For one thing, the Dean of the College of Cardinals is a title that sounds more important than it is.
The Dean organizes meetings and otherwise “coordinates the activities” of the College of Cardinals, but he has no real power.
His office serves essentially as a
