A Melancholy Pope Michael Still Waiting For Panama Delegates, Welcoming Committee To Pick Him Up From Airport

Photo: AndrewHermez

Pope Michael landed in Panama for the first time on Tuesday, launching a six-day visit that will highlight his love for the Tridentine Mass and his desire to tackle the Church’s most significant political controversies.

In an unprecedented welcome for a Church dignitary, the manager at the airport’s Orange Julius, his wife, and their daughters, along with 17-year-old Sbarro cashier and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, traveled to Gate C-17 from the food court to greet the pontiff.

“I saw that one documentary about him…that was funny, so when I heard he was here, I totally had to come take a selfie with him to post,” Sbarro cashier Timmy Ryland said before telling EOTT that the 65-year-old conclavist kept asking “weird questions” like whether [Ryland] and his girlfriend were Panama dignitaries arriving from the capital to pick him up for “the big event.”

“He kept lifting his hand to my face to kiss his ring and I was like, umm…eww, no,” Rylands on-again, off-again girlfriend Taylor Bellman reported.

On the plane to Panama, Michael held an 80-minute press conference with fellow passengers, all of whom he mistook to be members of the press, telling them that he was happy to make his first Panama, and asked everyone to pray for him, before one passenger reportedly shouted at him to “shut up, already.”

After a brief private meeting with the manager of Orange Julius at Luggage Claim, Pope Michael climbed into a simple black Fiat hatchback with an Uber sticker on the window, much in keeping with his desire to live a humble life as he does in Kansas with his mother and the other handful of people that elected him Pope in 1990.

“Yeah, I called him an Uber,” Orange Julius manager Barry Minkler told EOTT. “I felt bad. The guy’s been sitting here waiting for some sort of dignitary or welcoming committee to come pick him up. So I told Timmy over at SBarro that we should go greet him and send him on his way.”

At press time, the Uber driver who picked up Pope Michael from the airport is asking him to stop getting out of the car at every red light to greet and bless people on the street.