Known for calling cabinet meetings at dawn and for sleeping only four hours a day Venezuela's late president, Hugo Chávez, was a well-attested workaholic.
For acting president Nicolás Maduro, Chávez – who died last week after a two-year battle with cancer – is still hard at work and might have played a role in Wednesday's papal vote.
"We know that our commander ascended to the heights and is face to face with Christ," Maduro said at the inauguration of a book fair.
"Something influenced the choice of a South American pope, someone new arrived at Christ's side and said to him: 'Well, it seems to us South America's time has come.'"
Maduro was named by Chávez himself, in one of his last televised address to the nation last December, as his preferred successor "if and when the time came".
According to the Venezuelan constitution Maduro must run for office in a snap election scheduled for 14 April. Few doubt that after Chávez's open endorsement Maduro will win against opposition leader Henrique Capriles but detractors have widely criticised Maduro as a bad imitator of the garrulous style that made his mentor so popular with Venezuelans.
Maduro's comments on the new pope, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio – whose animosity towards Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, one of Chávez's closest allies, is well known – were met with umbrage and black humour.
"I am a little confused: Chavez, from yonder, influenced the vote so that a pope with links to the military dictatorship would win? Did he change sides?" tweeted Francisco Toro, a frequent critic of the Chávez government.
Maduro is also confronting mounting criticism for backtracking on his decision to embalm Hugo Chavez's body. "It looks like we won't be able to have President Chávez embalmed", Maduro announced on Wednesday.
César Miguel Rondón, host of a popular radio programme, said: "The eyes of the world are on us for these comments. What an embarrasment!"
According to Maduro, the decision came too late and, according to experts from Germany and Russia, there are difficulties with the process that according to Maduro "would prevent us from doing what was done to Lenin, Ho Chi Minh or Mao Tse Tung".
Chávez's remains have yet to find a final resting place. The decision could be made ultimately by the Chávez family, or in a consultive referendum by the people.
A march has been scheduled for Friday to accompany Chávez's body as it is transported from the military academy, where it has lain in state for a week, to the Museum of Military History, from where it could be taken to the National Pantheon.
Government officials have said he will lie side by side with the nation's independence hero Simón Bolívar.