HOW CATHOLIC POPES ARE ELECTED AND WHY THEY CHANGE NAMES WHEN ELECTED

 

The religious head of the Catholic Church is known as the Pope or the Bishop of Rome. He is elected by the College of Cardinals, who as a group rank next to the Pope as in ecclesiastical authority. New Pope are elected on the death or  retirement of a current Pope. To be elected, a new Pope must be named on two-thirds of the ballots cast, and each member of the College of Cardinals must vote. Once elected, a Pope must be asked by the dean of of cardinals if he accepts the post. If he does, he is then askef to choose a name.
    Name changing can be traced to Saint Peter,
the very first Pope of the Catholic Church. Saint Peter's given name was Symeon or Simon, this the name he went by until Jesus changed it to Peter,  which means rock in Greek.
    However, popular history shows that the first pope to change his name was Pope John II, whose birth name, prior to his election in January 533, was Mercurius. He was named after the Roman God Mercury, but in order to avoid naming a pagan god the head of the Holy See, he changed it.
    Name changing did not really catch on until Pope Sergius IV in 1009 who revived this tradition. Ironically, Pope Sergius's real name was Peter di Porca, and he changed it because he considered unseemly style himself Peter II. In the last one thousand years, only Pope Adrian VI and Pope Marcellus II have decided to keep their birth name after becoming Pope.
One name, however, is off-limits: Peter is considered sacrosanct in honour of the first Pope, who tradition holds was also the longest-serving.