TIME PERSON OF THE TEAR: YOU CAN SAFELY BET THE RENT MONEY ON THE POPE

Here's the list, but you can ignore the other nine. It's gonna be the pope. It's a lock.

Bashar Assad, President of Syria
Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder
Ted Cruz, Texas Senator
Miley Cyrus, Singer
Pope Francis, Leader of the Catholic Church
Barack Obama, President of the United States
Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services
Edward Snowden, N.S.A. Leaker
Edith Windsor, Gay rights activist

Newsmagazines are quite fond of covering religion -- Time has already done two pope covers this year -- and with Francis it's easy, because a lot of liberals and sophisticates are swooning over him. Esquire calls him "the most interesting man in the world" -- hey, if you can allude to a pope with a slogan for an upmarket beer, then the pope is cool. And yet the choice is going to play well in the heartland, where all those other religion stories play quite well.

I said on Twitter that Francis is the media mancrush of the year. He asked if I thought Francis beat Chris Christie. Oh, hell yeah. Christie's a politics story. Francis is human interest, with across-the-board appeal. He's the winner. Trust me.

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UPDATE, WEDNESDAY: Told ya.