After making his career in technical writing, Alton man turns to popes

Alton resident Anura "Anu" Gurugé has written five books and hundreds of articles about the design of database systems. Why, then, did he choose to write his sixth book, which has just become available for purchase online — about the names of Popes?

The simple answer is because he found it interesting, and Gurugé is a writer, so he wrote about it.

The resulting book is titled "Popes and the Tale of Their Names."

"I wrote about technology because I had to make a living," said Gurugé. His first book, SNA Theory and Practice, about IBM's systems network architecture, was written in 1983 and published in 1984. Four other books followed, all concerning the same general subject matter. Along the way, Gurugé published hundreds of articles, keeping a count until he reached 250 published articles.

His first article was published in 1978, and he reached 250 in January of 1998. He's stopped counting, but he's still writing technical articles.

"Technology has always been what I do to pay the bills," he said.

Gurugé grew up in Ceylon, the country in southern Asia, off the tip of India, now known as Sri Lanka. His father was a career diplomat, and at the age of 14, in 1967, Gurugé moved from his native land to the much different Buffalo, New York. A year later he moved to Paris, and in 1969 he attended a boarding school in London. He lived in Britain for 26 years, and still considers it his emotional homeland.

His time living in Buffalo was brief, but profound. It was during that time that his father brought him to the 1967 Montreal World Expo, where the young Gurugé heard the word "computer" for the first time. Two years later he would be programming computers, using the now-archane paper tape and punch card data saving systems. He would eventually work for IBM, and became an expert in the world of systems network architecture.

Information technology was only one of his interests, though. Renaissance art and its creators is another of his interests, and it was his reading on that topic that lead him to popes, as they were often the ones who hired the renaissance masters. "It's more or less impossible to read about renaissance art without encountering popes," he said. From there, his interest "dovetailed," he said, to research about Popes.

As he began reading, he became intrigued by the patterns of naming that the popes adopted. When he looked into it further, he found that the wealth of books on papal history had a vacuum in the area that Gurugé had been informally researching, and the idea for his latest book was conceived. "My goal was to put a stake in the ground in the name of papal name research."

It may sound like an arbitrary or random research topic, but Gurugé's research turned up several interesting twists and turns that demanded his investigation. For example, there was a span of 494 years during which popes assumed a new name upon their election. That run ended in 1503, when Giuliano della Rovere became pope, and he chose to be known as Pope Julius II, Julius being a variation of Guiliano. In the following 52 years, two other popes chose to keep a variant of their given name, but since 1555, all popes have chosen to assume a name already used.

The assumed names were often picked to honor a particular past pope, but Gurugé has found that this was not always the case. When Albino Luciani became pope, he chose the name John Paul I to honor two of his predecessors. This was the first case where a double name was assumed, and it was also curious as it was the only case where a pope decided to be named "the first" during his lifetime.

The most common assumed name for popes has been Clement, which has been used 13 times. Lately, however, it has been Pius, which was assumed six times combined in the 19th and 20th centuries. Not every pope has been pious, though, papal histories revealed. Popes have dabbled in murder, sex, war and even politics. "Papal history covers every facet of human life," said Gurugé. "They cover the whole gamut." Pope Formosus, the 112th Pope, was so ill-liked that his body was exhumed and subjected to a mock trial by Pope Stephen VI. "We probably won't have that name again," Gurugé said of Formosus.

The odds on the next pope name is more than an academic matter. Irish bookmaker PaddyPower.com was taking bets on the likelihood of the next pope name following the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict was favored, with 3:1 odds. Strangely, the site had also listed Peter with 8:1 odds.

Gurugé said Peter, the name of the first Bishop of Rome, is the one name that is least likely to be repeated. The reason has to do with the controversial prophecies of 12th Century Saint Malachy, Bishop of Armagh. He predicted that Peter II will be the final pope, will be known as "Peter the Roman," and his papacy will herald the destruction of Rome. With that in mind, it's most likely that future popes will avoid the name Peter. In fact, Gurugé's research has revealed 11 popes who were named Peter, or a variant thereof, who changed their name upon election to avoid the stigma of being Pope Peter II.

Gurugé became so enthralled in papal history that he launched no fewer than four websites, ranging from informal to academic, on the subject. He found that writing about popes was in fact more difficult than writing about database systems. With his technology books, he was writing about something he already knew, and much of his books he wrote from memory. With popes, though, he had to do "a considerable amount of research." For each day of writing, he had to spend three or four days researching.

The research hasn't scared him away, though. He's already working on his next book project, a book covering papal elections.

"Popes and the Tale of Their Names" is available on Amazon.com. Gurugé lives in Alton, with his wife Deanna and their children.