![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kathyschiffer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Pope-Urban-VII-213x300.jpg\")
Once upon a time, I took home delivery of the Detroit Free Press<\/strong>\u2014allowing its ink to smear my fingers, spread to my cheek, leave smudges on the kitchen table.\u00a0 To my irritation, my children left it around, comic pages spread wide on the living room floor.\u00a0 My husband read the Sports Page instead of engaging in witty repartee.<\/p>\nI\u2019m digital now;<\/strong> but I have a vague memory<\/strong> from those olden days of a newspaper column I really enjoyed\u2014something like \u201cThings I Learned En Route to Learning\u00a0Other Things.\u201d Maybe it was Chicago-based columnist Sydney J. Harris, because he would have liked that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n Anyway, today is one of those days.<\/strong><\/p>\n Today I learned that Pope Urban VII had the shortest papal reign in history.<\/strong>\u00a0 Pope Urban\u2014who was born Giovanni Battista Castagna and who served for a time as apostolic nuncio to Spain, was elected to the papacy on September 15, 1590.\u00a0 He succeeded Pope Sixtus V.\u00a0 However, Pope Urban contracted malaria and died only 13 days later<\/strong>\u2014on September 27, 1590.<\/p>\n Once upon a time, I took home delivery of the Detroit Free Press\u2014allowing its ink to smear my fingers, spread to my cheek, leave smudges on the kitchen table.\u00a0 To my irritation, my children left it around, comic pages spread wide on the living room floor.\u00a0 My husband read the Sports Page instead of engaging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,197,234],"tags":[2868,2900],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-pope-urban-vii","category-smoking","tag-pope-urban-vii","tag-smoking"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kathyschiffer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/No-smoking-300x300.png\")
With so little time to issue papal bulls or encyclicals<\/strong>, Pope Urban VII has at least one claim to fame:\u00a0 He seems to have been ahead of his time, because he issued the world\u2019s first known public smoking ban.\u00a0<\/strong> Pope Urban threatened to excommunicate anyone who \u201ctook tobacco in the porchway of or inside a church, whether it be by chewing it, smoking it with a pipe, or sniffing it in powdered form through the nose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"