The Pope crossed my Facebook stream. I wondered if it was really the Pope. I’ve friended Jesus H. Christ, Jesus M. Christ, and Jesus (Plain) Christ already, just to make sure I get the right one. I couldn’t find the Buddha on Facebook but Rumi is on Twitter–he’s pretty inspirational, and of course the Dalai Lama says something nice to me every morning. I love his tweets.

Yesterday, when I saw El Papa (that means “the Pope.” “Big Papi is someone else). I was pretty excited. I checked his friends so see if it was really him. Much like watching people look for mystery mechanical malfunctions under steaming hoods of cars, I must confess, I don’t really know who his friends would be–I guess I was looking for Cardinal this, Father that, or Rabbi Schmuley. I did see a bunch of good Catholics I knew from growing up, which means that they think this is the real Pope, too.

I had a fleeting thought that some computer nerd put the Pope’s likeness on Facebook. You think computer people are serious, but that’s really not true. This is just the type of thing someone who’s been coding too much drinking eighty Red Bulls a day would do, “Hey, guys, I can’t find the bugs, let’s take a break and answer some prayers.” I can see them responding to all the in-box confessions right now. Or it could be the kid in my Period  3 class who’s always looking down at something.

But just in case it’s really the Pope, I wanted to be in on the festivities before he got five thousand friends and I can’t be one. I have one friend like that who hit his Facebook limit. He has too many friends and Facebook won’t let us be friends. I have to be his follower. I don’t like to be my real-life friends’ followers, because next they’ll expect veneration or something. That wouldn’t be so bad for the Pope, but for a normal person, it can go to their heads pretty quick. And anyway, how can Facebook put friend limits on God’s leaders?

As I continued to look through the Pope’s feed, I noticed a few things that made me think my Red Bull theory might be true–or at least the one about the kid in my Period 3 class. There are mistakes in grammar and use of texting protocol in posts, such as the lowercase “I.”  Jesus would never permit the bastardization of grammar. Certainly, the head of his church wouldn’t post in textspeak. Unless…texters are the target audience to be saved…

Also, there is a request to email a Yahoo address for donations. There is no organizational link to this organization. I wonder if the IP address will be in some country I can’t spell that is in the international news for fraud. Hmmmm… But we should trust, I guess, and helping some guy using proxy servers to solicit donations is probably as good as helping the actual disadvantaged, because if it weren’t for the “donations,” he’d be disadvantaged too… Right?

I’m going to keep “the Pope’s” friendship. It’s a small price to pay if it is the real Pope. And if it isn’t, I might just send some prayer requests to Red Bull coder or Kid in Period Three or whoever you are.  I’m not sure what I’ll pray for, but I’ll make sure it’s good and juicy. Like salvation on crack. And it’ll be up to you to answer, oh God of Red Bull…

Let’s see what you come up with. Our eternal life is on the line…