Is there a reason why Pope John Paul II wasn called Pope John Paul Jr.?
Tradition–both kings and popes’ names are customarily followed by an ordinal number, such as I, II, III, and so forth. Since 1555, popes have chosen names other than their baptismal names either to honor their immediate predecessors, for example, Pope John II, or saints or previous popes whom they wished to emulate, for instance, Pope Benedict XVI. American parents attach the word junior after a son’s name if they name him exactly after his father if he, in turn, is not named after his father, or another more-distant relative. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s naming of his first-born son John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. is probably the most familiar recent example of this practice. A comma is placed before the Jr. or the III (or very rarely the IV or V) because both the junior and the Roman numeral placed after the name are considered parenthetical. If a senior dies, the son often drops the junior. Thus, if the father, William Robert Doe, dies, his son William Robert Doe, Jr. starts wr
