How Skittles are strangely predicting the next pope!

Catholics on social media have been known to speculate playfully about future popes, but one recent post took the cake -- or rather, the candy. In a tongue-in-cheek X (formerly Twitter) post, Catholic broadcaster Matt Swaim shared that he had devised a “complex matrix” to forecast how cardinals might vote in the next papal conclave.

The catch? His highly sophisticated analysis involved sorting cardinals into groups based on their views on liturgy, morality, church finances, and climate issues -- and then assigning each bloc a Skittles color. It was a deliciously absurd approach that only got more absurd (and more delicious) as the experiment went on.

According to his post, he painstakingly categorized each hypothetical bloc and assigned them a Skittle color for easy reference -- we're just imagining his conclave “war room” with candy pieces standing in for real church leaders.

But the real punchline came after all the meticulous sorting: Swaim promptly ate all the Skittles. In one swoop his entire conclave forecasting model vanished. “No one will ever know,” he quipped, implying that the secret of the next pope’s identity was now safely locked away in his stomach. The grand conclusion of this complex Catholic candy calculus? Even our best guesses are as ephemeral (and edible) as a bag of Skittles.

The lighthearted post struck a chord because it gently pokes fun at something many (most!) Catholics do: speculating about papal conclaves. Whenever a conclave draws near, conversations buzz with opinions on who the frontrunners are, what each cardinal might stand for, and which “camp” could have the upper hand.

People trade theories over coffee after Mass or swap articles listing papabili (likely papal candidates). Matt Swaim’s Skittles stunt reminds us that as entertaining as all this prognostication can be, predicting the Holy Spirit’s plans isn’t a science. In the end, the choice of the next pope is left to the College of Cardinals in prayer, guided by the Holy Spirit’s subtle promptings, not by any human “matrix.”