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USA Today
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
A conclave fantasy game has users winning by picking a lineup of potential popes
A conclave fantasy game has users winning by picking a lineup of potential popes With the papal conclave now entering its second day of voting for a new pope, you've surely heard about the betting markets available for people to wager on the outcome. If you thought those were extreme, just wait until you hear about the papal fantasy game people are playing. Yep, that's right. The gamification of the conclave isn't just reserved to betting. There's also an Italian fantasy game available for those who want to predict the next pope, thought it's played for bragging rights instead of money. It's called Fantapapa -- an Italian term for fantasy pope -- and it's not dissimilar from fantasy football, as managers are tasked with putting together a lineup of 11 players, er, cardinals they think have the best shot at becoming the next pope. The goal is to score the most points. Naturally, you may be wondering how points are scored if only one person can become pope, and this is where I'll lean on NPR for an explanation (it's too late to sign up for the game). According to NPR, managers can select one captain for their team and earn 1,000 points if that person becomes the next pope. They receive 500 points if they put the next pope anywhere else on their roster. Additional points are scored when the cardinals on their roster are mentioned in major Italian news outlets. More points can be scored by correctly guessing things like the next pope's name and whether he'll wear glasses during his first appearance in St. Peter's Square. Unsurprisingly, the betting favorite to become the next pope, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is among the top picks of the game's 70,000-plus users.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Pope betting goes digital: Inside Italy's viral Fantapapa game
As 133 cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel for the secret process of choosing the next pope, people around the world are doing something very different -- they're placing bets on who it might be. If you trust the betting public, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, is the most likely to be the next pope. Oddschecker, a betting odds website, shows him leading the pack, followed by Cardinal Luis Tagle from the Philippines, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi from Italy and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from Italy. However, Zuppi is the favorite on a popular Italian app called Fantapapa. It works like other fantasy sports leagues but for picking the next pope, and has become a sensation across Italy. MORE: Papal conclave live updates PHOTO: A view shows St. Peter's Basilica, ahead of the conclave to elect the next pope, as seen from Rome, Italy, May 6, 2025. (Amanda Perobelli/Reuters) "This game is a really fun game to play with friends and have a laugh," Federico La Rocca, a 23-year-old student, told ABC News. The game is simple: First, you create a team of cardinals, just like a fantasy league. Then you pick your team captain -- the cardinal you think will become pope. It's become a family affair for Alessandra Morisco, who said she plays in a league with her two daughters, mother and sister. "A lot of my friends are playing, even priests," Morisco told ABC News. "I think the power of this app is that it connects a serious task with an Italian way of taking things, with serenity and happiness. And it fosters a sense of community around this big historical event." Players can also predict the new pope's first words to the public, what name he will choose and how many failed votes it will take before a new pope is elected. PHOTO: People take pictures of the central loggia balcony at St. Peter's Basilica, where the name of the new pope will be announced and where he will give the Urbi and orbi at The Vatican, May 6, 2025. (Eloisa Lopez/Reuters) "I'm supporting [Cardinal Parolin]," Morisco said. "It's a funny way of saying that, of course, I would like to have him as pope, but it is not up to me -- it is the Holy Spirit that will decide." The app's creators, Pietro Pace and Mauro Vanetti, are surprised by its success. MORE: Who are the top contenders to be the next pope? "It's crazy for us. We developed a video game just for friends, not for everyone in Italy," Pace told ABC News. The pair rushed to develop Fantapapa in February, ahead of the conclave. "We don't even have a graphic designer," Vanetti said. "This is embarrassing, but there's no artists involved. So the cardinals, for example, I made them. They look a bit like my dog." While Fantapapa might be new, betting on popes isn't. Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, who studies economics at Nottingham Business School, told ABC News that records of betting on the Pope can be traced back to 1503. "Roman bankers would take bets off merchants... they would get tips from inside the conclave of what might be going on," he said. "So, they'd be able to set the odds." Today's pope betting market is bigger than ever. Oddschecker reports that more than 300,000 people from 140 countries have checked their site for odds. While betting on the pope isn't allowed on regulated U.S. sportsbooks, Oddschecker estimates people have bet over $17 million on unregulated sites. Some Catholic Church officials have called betting on the pope "indecent and shameful." However, Morisco told ABC News she didn't feel any Catholic guilt about playing Fantapapa. "I think it can make stronger the relationship with our religion," she said. "While we wait, we can pray or play." Unlike betting sites, Fantapapa doesn't involve any money -- app co-creator Pace suggested it offers a greater reward. "If you win the FantaPapa, you can have eternal glory," he said. "This is one important prize." Pope betting goes digital: Inside Italy's viral Fantapapa game originally appeared on
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
Pope betting goes digital: Inside Italy's viral Fantapapa game
As 133 cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel for the secret process of choosing the next pope, people around the world are doing something very different -- they're placing bets on who it might be. If you trust the betting public, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, is the most likely to be the next pope. Oddschecker, a betting odds website, shows him leading the pack, followed by Cardinal Luis Tagle from the Philippines, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi from Italy and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from Italy. However, Zuppi is the favorite on a popular Italian app called Fantapapa. It works like other fantasy sports leagues but for picking the next pope, and has become a sensation across Italy. "This game is a really fun game to play with friends and have a laugh," Federico La Rocca, a 23-year-old student, told ABC News. The game is simple: First, you create a team of cardinals, just like a fantasy league. Then you pick your team captain -- the cardinal you think will become pope. It's become a family affair for Alessandra Morisco, who said she plays in a league with her two daughters, mother and sister. "A lot of my friends are playing, even priests," Morisco told ABC News. "I think the power of this app is that it connects a serious task with an Italian way of taking things, with serenity and happiness. And it fosters a sense of community around this big historical event." Players can also predict the new pope's first words to the public, what name he will choose and how many failed votes it will take before a new pope is elected. "I'm supporting [Cardinal Parolin]," Morisco said. "It's a funny way of saying that, of course, I would like to have him as pope, but it is not up to me -- it is the Holy Spirit that will decide." The app's creators, Pietro Pace and Mauro Vanetti, are surprised by its success. "It's crazy for us. We developed a video game just for friends, not for everyone in Italy," Pace told ABC News. The pair rushed to develop Fantapapa in February, ahead of the conclave. "We don't even have a graphic designer," Vanetti said. "This is embarrassing, but there's no artists involved. So the cardinals, for example, I made them. They look a bit like my dog." While Fantapapa might be new, betting on popes isn't. Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, who studies economics at Nottingham Business School, told ABC News that records of betting on the Pope can be traced back to 1503. "Roman bankers would take bets off merchants... they would get tips from inside the conclave of what might be going on," he said. "So, they'd be able to set the odds." Today's pope betting market is bigger than ever. Oddschecker reports that more than 300,000 people from 140 countries have checked their site for odds. While betting on the pope isn't allowed on regulated U.S. sportsbooks, Oddschecker estimates people have bet over $17 million on unregulated sites. Some Catholic Church officials have called betting on the pope "indecent and shameful." However, Morisco told ABC News she didn't feel any Catholic guilt about playing Fantapapa. "I think it can make stronger the relationship with our religion," she said. "While we wait, we can pray or play." Unlike betting sites, Fantapapa doesn't involve any money -- app co-creator Pace suggested it offers a greater reward.
CBC
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
This game is like fantasy football, but for picking a pope
Social Sharing Mauro Vanetti describes himself as a "conclave geek." "People are usually not as much into conclaves as I am," the Italian game developer told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "I only watch TV during conclaves." It's no surprise, then, that Vanetti is one of the brains behind Fantapapa, the hot new online game that has people building fantasy conclave teams to predict the new pope. "It's a really fun game to play with friends and have a laugh," Italian student Federico La Rocca, 23, said. "Initially my dad sent it to me ironically, but now that it's going to be the conclave, I decided to have a go and try it." 'Mock them in a good way' More than 130 Catholic cardinals on Wednesday began the centuries-old ritual to elect a successor to Pope Francis. But while the conclave itself takes place entirely in secret, people outside the Vatican are busy dissecting the politics at play and speculating on the possible outcome. Fantapapa taps into that energy, says Vanetti, allowing people to build fantasy football-style teams of the cardinals. The captain is the player's pick for pope. "The election of the pope might be seen as a very religious and pious event, but it's also kind of a power grab in a way. So people like to imagine themselves within this plot," he said. "Or sometimes they want to express their distance from these kinds of manoeuvres. And that's also something that games can do. They can make you feel inside something, or they can also make you kind of put things in perspective and make fun of them, mock them in a good way." WATCH | How to play Fantapapa: Guess the next pope with Fantapapa 1 day ago Duration 0:49 By "a good way," Vanetti means that he and his team were careful not to make light of people's religious beliefs. "The target, in a way, of the game is mostly the institution. And, at least in Italy, even people that are strong believers, they are very easily critical towards the human organzation, which is the Catholic Church," he said. While he's not a believer himself, he says many Catholics seem to be enjoying Fantapapa. "We even had a few priests playing," he said. 'The only prize you win is eternal glory' Creating a fantasy league game about a conclave has its challenges. Unlike a sports game, the play-by-play drama of the conclave all happens behind closed Vatican doors. "In a fantasy football game, all the players can score points during the actual games, while in the conclave, there's only one winner, as everyone knows," Vanetti said. In Fantapapa, every time one of your chosen cardinals gets mentioned in the national news, you get points. But you get the biggest score — 1,000 points — if your captain gets elected pope. WATCH | Conclave author weighs in on papal politics: Conclave author on the 'mystery' of choosing the next pope 1 hour ago Duration 1:19 But now that the conclave is officially under way, the game is temporarily frozen. Only when the white smoke emerges from the Vatican chimney, signalling that a new pope has been chosen, will the Fantapapa winner be revealed. "The winner of Fantapapa doesn't get anything material, and we wanted to be very clear about that," Vanetti said. Not only is betting on the new pope illegal in Italy, but Vanetti says he and his colleagues are anti-gambling advocates. "It's an interesting way of also spoiling the market for the bookmakers," he said. "The only prize you win is eternal glory, and it's really going to be eternal because this is the first, and perhaps the last, Fantapapa ever." Pope betting very popular Pope betting is not illegal everywhere, and experts say the popularity of gambling on the future of the papacy is increasing worldwide. It's even topped the Europa League soccer tournament and Formula One drivers' championship, said Sam Eaton, U.K. manager for Oddschecker, a leading online platform analyzing odds across sports, events and other betting markets. "There's a huge level of interest globally," Eaton said. "I don't think we've had a market like this where we've had so many countries interested in seeing odds." But, no matter what the odds say, nobody knows for sure who the next pope will be. In Fantapapa, Italian cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi is the leading the pack. "Zuppi has some chances in the real world as well, but we believe that he was overinflated in the game just because he is the Archbishop of Bologna and he's very likeable," Vanetti said. Vanetti says he picked Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle of the Philippines as his c aptain. "He's got some chances, and he's considered progressive," he said. While only a man can win the papacy, Vanetti says anyone can win Fantapapa, and a lot of players are women. "Italian men, they — or, should I say, we — tend to be very arrogant about how good we are at predicting events," Vanetti said. "It's a typical know-it-all attitude that's very, very typical of Italian males. So I would really like a woman to win this."
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Wait for Vatican white smoke fires up social media
Social media is buzzing ahead of the Vatican conclave to elect a new pope after Pope Francis's death. Young people are especially engaged, drawn to the ceremony's secrecy and spectacle. Online games, viral videos, and digital-savvy cardinals have turned the event into a global cultural and digital phenomenon. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads ype has been building on social media around the Catholic Church's secretive, centuries-old tradition of conclaves to elect a new pope, animating users from the White House on President Donald Trump on Saturday posted an apparently AI-generated image of himself wearing papal vestments and sitting on a throne, one finger directed to the striking picture was the most notorious among thousands that have bubbled up since the death of Pope Francis on April 21 and ahead of the cardinals' gathering from than 1.3 million tweets have been published on X about the conclave, according to monitoring platform Visibrain, while TikTok videos on the topic have been viewed over 363 million times on the network with unparallelled reach among the passionate pope-watchers can fire up online game "Fantapapa" to pick their favourite cardinals and make predictions for the next pontiff in a style similar to sports mystery, pomp and ritual around the conclave -- from the opulent Sistine Chapel surroundings to the ethereal black or white smoke signalling ballot results -- "lends itself to the narrative formats of social networks" said Refka Payssan, a researcher in information and communication sciences."A conclave means both gilt, protocol, ceremony, but also secrecy and mystery" cannily nurtured by the Vatican, agreed Stephanie Laporte, founder of digital strategy consultancy OTTA."Young people love to speculate" about outcomes, Laporte added."Everyone on social networks has an opinion and everyone wants to decode the news, look for clues, know which cardinal will become the pope. It's almost like an 'escape game'," she noted that the conclave fires up the "curiosity of seeing history happen live", marking a rare event -- the first in 12 years -- with potential global if not Catholic themselves, "young people are very conscious of the pope's influence on hundreds of millions, even billions of people, whether it's in his stance on contraception or the environment," Laporte fever is also a reflection of the Vatican's successful turn to digital communications in recent years to build bonds with younger by Benedict XVI in 2012 but mostly used by Francis, the papal X account @pontifex reaches 50 million followers across its nine Francis's own Instagram account had more than 10 million Church has backed many cardinals' own ventures into the digital realm, with some becoming bona fide internet York prelate Timothy Dolan has been publishing videos about the run-up to the conclave to his almost 300,000 X followers and 55,000 on Instagram -- without giving away any sensitive Philippine cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has made his mark online with karaoke videos, tallying 600,000 Facebook snapshots are in the mix, with Tokyo's archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi posting a photo with colleagues from the bus on the way to pray at Francis's "are absolutely fascinating personalities who've taken their place in pop culture," firing public enthusiasm for the event, Laporte fascination has been stoked by pop culture blockbusters like Dan Brown's novel "Angels and Demons", adapted for film in 2009, or the acclaimed thriller "Conclave" released this year, based on a book by novelist Robert Harris.
