Lawyer offers popefrancis.com to pope

If the media is to believed, the new Pope Francis is an extremely modest man.

Eschewing the life of palaces in Argentina, he lived modestly and even cooked for himself.

Such frugality, reticence, and identification with the poor of the world isn't often associated with lawyers.

Yet one member of Chicago's legal faith is offering up an act of generosity akin to just chatting with Mary Magdalene.

Chris Connors, spurred merely by religious whimsy, bought popefrancis.com in 2010.

He told the Chicago Tribune: "I thought that at some point in the near future that the names would get more relevant. Nobody names their kids Innocent anymore. And I thought it'd be great if a pope chose Francis after the great saint."

Still, Connors' gamble rather paid off.Actually, it would be a fine thing if "Innocent" made a comeback. I would feel so much more comfortable if the CEO of a new, secure social network was called "Innocent," rather than "Larry" or "Mark."

Oddly, though, unlike all those faithful who rushed to the fleshpot of GoDaddy in order to buy up any domain that was pope-related last week, Connors is not looking for even an ounce of flesh from the Church.

He's offering to put the domain on the pope's collection plate -- free of charge, of course.

Indeed, Chicago's Cardinal George has already deemed the gesture "delightful."

Connors admits that other people have already been in touch, brandishing 30 pieces of silver and more before his face.

Yet he insists that he wants to "give Pope Francis dibs first."

I wonder if some tasteful speculator has already bought popefrancis.xxx.

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Pope Francis spurs hundreds of domain name registrations

Shortly after the smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel turned from black to white and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was deemed the world's new Roman Catholic leader, hundreds of people took to the Web to register domain names with the new pope's title.

Web hosting and domain registration site GoDaddy told CNET that it racked up more than 100 domain registrations within the first 10 minutes of the announcement. By the first hour, 479 new domains were registered. And, as of this writing, 647 domain names have been registered at GoDaddy.

"The election of Pope Francis is causing hundreds of new domain name registrations," a GoDaddy spokesperson told CNET. "Technology and religion came together this afternoon following the announcement of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I."

The newly registered domain names contained keywords such as Pope, Francis, Bergoglio, and Habemus Papam, which is the Latin translation for "We have a pope." Interestingly, a forward-thinking GoDaddy customer already registered the domain name PopeFrancis.com in April 2010.

Until today, the Sistine Chapel has been atechnology dead zone. In an effort to ensure absolute secrecy and prevent electronic snooping on the 115 cardinals casting their votes, all tech devices were banned.

However, with the unveiling of Pope Francis, the tech whir is back at it. Not only have all of these new domain names been registered, but the pope's Twitter account has also been reactivated.

Most likely those registering domains with keywords relating to the pope, don't have much to do with the Catholic Church. Known as cybersquatting, anyone can register a name, sit on it, and sell it to whoever will pay top dollar. According to the BBC, PopeBenedictXVI.com was sold for more than $5,000 in 2005.

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