Top Words to Look for at Papal Conclave Obscure Phrases Can Have Tremendous Impact: Interregnum, Conclave, Popables

Danville, Calif. April 19, 2005. As the Papal Conclave convenes there are sometimes obscure words and phrases that will have tremendous global impact as the process unfolds.

According to an analysis performed by The Global Language Monitor’s (www.LanguageMonitor.com), these are some of the top words and phrases to look for:

1. Interregnum: The times when there is no sitting pontiff between the death of a pope and the election of his successor.
2. Conclave: Literally from the Latin for ‘with a key’ meaning a secret room or closet. Hence, the ‘secret assembly of the cardinals for the election of a new pope’.
3. Pope: What’s a Pope? Literally, the ‘Dad’ or the Holy Father, hence ‘papa’ in the Romance Languages. Originally, ‘pappas’ in Greek.
4. Pontiff: Pontifex maximus! Leader of the ‘Holy See’; the Office of the Papacy is known as the ‘Pontificate’. From the Latin from ‘to make a bridge’, whose meaning, though a bit obscure, meant to have control of one of the bridges considered sacred in Rome during pre-Christian days.
5. Sede vacante: The Pontificate is currently a ‘vacant seat’.
6. Cardinal: A ‘Prince of the Church,’ originally subordinate to bishops, which is opposite the current custom. From the Latin for ‘door hinge’, as in a key element upon which something else depends.
7. College of Cardinals: The ‘Sacred College,’ all the 117 ‘Princes of the Church’ taken as a whole. The original Latin ‘collegium’ refers to a guild, or a secret society.
8. Color of a Cardinal’s Vestments: Cardinal, of course, between scarlet and crimson.
9. Eminence: The proper manner to address a Cardinal: Eminentia or Eminentissimi (His Eminence).
10. Official Vatican Language: Latin.
11. The Official Lingua Franca: Italian with English quickly up-and-coming.
12. Languages of the Vatican Website: Italian, English, Spanish, German, and Portuguese
13. Popables: Those cardinals eligible to elect the new pope, who must be under 80 years of age. Although any Catholic male is eligible to be elected, these 117 are considered the only likely candidates (since the last time a non-cardinal assumed the papacy was some 400 years ago.

Background: A Global Media Outpouring
The Death of Pope John Paul II has unleashed an unprecedented global media outpouring that has transformed from a groundswell into a deluge. The Global Language Monitor’s daily Internet and media analysis now shows that in the major global print and electronic media and on the Internet, John Paul II’s death has now surpassed the initial coverage of the South Asian Tsunami, the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks, The Bush re-election, and the Deaths of Ronald Reagan and Princess Diana, among other events that shook the world.

Since days since the Pontiff’s death, there have been some 102,000 major news stories and more than 12 million Internet citations. In comparison, for the entire preceding year there were only 28,000 major new stories and 1.5 million Internet citations about John Paul II.

The word historic is associated with the pontiff nearly 3,000,000 times, while conservative is associated some 1,750,000 times, and loved or beloved some 600,000 times since John Paul's passing.

Within the first 72 hours of the Pontiff's passing, there have been:
· Almost 3 times as many news stories for John Paul as there were for the 9/11 Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, though in the ‘major global media’ the comparison was far closer.
· Some ten times more news stores than were published concerning the re-election of President Bush.

In addition, within the first 72 hours of the Pontiff's passing, there have been:
· More than five times as many stories as initially generated for the South Asia Tsunami on December 26-29th, 2004 (though the Tsunami swell grew unabated for some time, as the horrific scale of the tragedy became apparent).

According to Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor, “Other relevant comparisons might be the deaths of Ronald Reagan in 2004 and Princess Diana in 1997. These also, were populist-type phenomena with unprecedented outpourings of grief, though on a far more localized scale.

“Perhaps the root of this phenomenon lies in the fact that ordinary people came to be acquainted with this Pope unlike any other in memory. He was personable, globetrotting, at his best as a friendly parish priest, 'writ large'. He was a truly global Pontiff, adept at using the traditional media (and the internet) to his advantage. Evidently, on his instructions, the media was even notified of his passing via text messages and e-mail.”

To arrive at these numbers, The Global Language Monitor utilizes its proprietary Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), which tracks specified words and phrases in the global print and electronic media and on the Internet. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance.

The Global Language Monitor will be posting a continuous update, and an expanded analysis, on its site.

The Global Language Monitor analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices, and their impact on the various aspects of culture. A worldwide assemblage of linguists, professional wordsmiths and bibliophiles, supports the GLM to help monitor the latest trends in the evolution (and demise) of language, word usage and word choices.

For more information, go to www.LanguageMonitor.com.