Chapter 2: I'd like to Pope it! (1840-1848)
In Europe little has changed from 1836 to 1840 other than the Pope achieving Great Power status.
To celebrate this new position the Pope declared a week of celebration. There were rivers of wine, oceans of fruit and all sorts of entertainment, but then the unlikely happened. A puppet show!
It was a puppet show about a country at the end of the world where a lion, a zebra and some funny animals were singing "I like to move it."
The song burned itself onto the Pope's mind and became an obsession. As the year of 1941 dawned the Pope woke up from his sleep and suddenly declared "I'd like to Pope it, Pope it." It would make as a great expansion as well as an opportunity to convert some heathens to the one true faith, he thought to himself. An expedition was equipped and now the newly constructed transport fleet came in handy as the Pope had hoped.
The 5th February the expedition landed on an empty beach on the island at the end of the world known as Madagascar. As the expedition traveled further inland they were met with a fierce resistance which was knocked down in two bloody battles.
Soon after on the 3rd of August 1841 the southern half of Madagascar got Poped. The Influence of the Pope had begun to spread across the world and brought Korea and Sokota into the Papal Sphere.
These two new markets provided large quantities of coal, iron, grain and cattle while also providing a large export market compared to The Papal State. However the State of Romagna did not benefit from this as it had not industrialized as fast as the other two states so the Pope built a Paper factory.
This was done because the Pope wanted to flood his new colony in brand new Bibles. An ingenious way to convert the population, he thought to himself. To hand out all these Bibles the Pope needed some sort of workforce. He got an idea, why not use the people who had sinned, they could be shipped to the new colony on Madagascar and hand out Bibles to repent.
At the same time this would also increase the standing of the Pope over time and was therefore a very beneficial arrangement and thus the Papal Penal Colony was established.
Parallel to the Madagascan expedition the Pope launched a Botanic expedition as he saw it as a great way to gain prestige and as an opportunity to get a plant, a flower or some sort of vegetation named after him.
Unfortunately the expedition did not live up to the Pope's expectations. After some time he stopped receiving letters from the expedition and four years after their departure from Rome it was discovered that they had been eaten my cannibals. (fået den cruel fate)
During spring 1842 Idealism was completed and the Pope ordered the research department to continue on Experimental Railroads. After a little more than a year the department was done and began studying Ideological Thought. During this research The Papal State was hit by a potato blight causing the Pope to order the examination of possible Medicine, to cure this, when the development team could find space in their schedule.
After the blight had been knocked down the Pope looked to new expansion and found that a group of islands off the coast of Madagascar was belonging to the newly conquered state of Madagascar.
“We can not let anyone claim these islands our country would lose face!” the pope exclaimed. Because of this a naval base was constructed in Toliara, and in September 1846 the Comoros islands were colonized.
The conquest of the northern part of Madagascar soon followed and the Pope's obsession faded as the rest of Madagascar was subdued and got Poped on January 30th 1948.
The Papal States had established a place in the sun and with this new land the population under Papal rule was now 1.4 million an increase of over 70%. It also led to the expansion of the armed forces by including an African army. The time for peace had come.