Meet The Chicago Guy Who Registered Popefrancis.com Three Years Ago

The domain name popefrancis.com is owned by a Chicago lawyer who registered the address nearly three years ago, but who today declined to answer questions about his apparent prescience (or luck).

Christopher Connors, 39, appeared taken aback when contacted at his office by a TSG reporter. He declined to say what led him to register popefrancis.com in April 2010, or what he had planned for the site (which is parked on a Go Daddy server).

Pictured at right, Connors is a solo practitioner who specializes in representing whistleblowers who seek to “report anonymously information about corporate bribery, fraud, or corruption to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.” In return, these whistleblowers can sometimes receive “substantial rewards” from the SEC, according to the web site for Connors’s law firm.

It does not appear that Connors is in the business of buying and selling web domains. While he has registered about 30 other addresses, each of them seems related to his legal practice (like sectipster.com and whistleblowerhub.com). None of these other domains contain the word “pope.”

Connors, a former assistant state’s attorney, is a 1999 graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s law school.