Len, there hasn't been a living former Pope in 600 years, so it's kind of a unique situation.
Bucky, your anti-Catholic bias is showing. Just a question, when was the denomination that you belong to founded and what denomination did it split off from, or who founded it? I would think that a church with a history dating back two millennium might just be a little closer to the church Jesus started than one that is maybe two centuries old. And bible verses are just like statistics, they can be selectively used to support or reject just about any position.