The time Burt Reynolds became Pope

It was 1978 and riding high of the back of global smash Smokey and the Bandit, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star on the planet. He had the world at his feet and it seemed like he could do now wrong. That is, until he tried to become leader of the Catholic Church.

“Burt was just a great actor and a hell of a guy,” said long term friend and colleague Dom Deluise in a 2004 interview.

“But he wasn’t Papal material. I mean, we all warned him – don’t try and be Pope, but the thing with Burt is, he’s a stubborn guy and if he wants something, he’s going to go for it.”

In August 1978, Pope Paul VI died, and the world mourned the loss of one of it’s great moral arbiters. The Catholic Church was at a loss as to how to replace him.

It was then that they received a call from Burt Reynolds offering his services.

“Everyone loved Smokey and the Bandit, and the Cardinals were no exception,” remembers Pope Benedict XVI, who had recently been made Cardinal at the time.

“So, when Burt Reynolds called up offering to be the new Pope. Who were we to turn him down?”

On August 12^th, the Catholic Church got it’s first Pope Burt.

Sadly, Burt Reynolds’ Papacy did not go well. Eschewing the famous Popemobile for a flame-red Pontiac Firebird, smoking endless cigars and filling the Vatican up with sexy, sexy ladies, it was clear from the beginning that Pope Burt was no ordinary Pope.

Within a few days, the Cardinals sent a delegation to the Pope to request he moderate his behaviour. The response to ‘chill out guys, and grab a brewski’ did not go down well.

Several more days of ‘the party Pope’ went by and the Cardinals were forced to send another delegation to ask for his resignation. They were prepared to dig in and not accept no for an answer

However, the expected showdown didn’t transpire. They arrived at the Vatican to find Pope Burt packing up his Pontiac with all his belongings.

“He’d got the opportunity to make the stuntman picture ‘Hooper,’ it was his dream project, all he wanted to do,” said Deluise.

So, with a cheery ‘Keep on trucking,’ as the Pontiac pulled away, Pope Burt resigned the Papcy and became plain old Burt Reynolds again.

Pope Jean Paul I became Pope on August 26^th and one of the strangest episodes in the history of the Catholic Church’s ended.

It wasn’t until 2005 when Matt Damon became Pope that the church saw the like again.