It has been announced that the new pope will be called Francis, not Francis I, a title that will be used if there is a second pope with that name. This is the ancient custom of the Catholic Church though it was not followed in the case of John Paul I. It is also the custom of British royalty, where we have Queens Victoria and Anne with no regnal number, whereas in Spain the King is styled Juan Carlos I.
The situation in the UK is in fact more complicated than that. As Wikipedia explains:
Though the situation was the same in every one of the Queen's realms beyond the United Kingdom, only within, in Scotland, did the title Elizabeth II cause controversy as there had never been an Elizabeth I in Scotland. In an act of sabotage, new Royal Mail post boxes in Scotland, bearing the royal cypher EIIR, were vandalised, after which, to avoid further problems, post boxes and Royal Mail vehicles in Scotland bore only the Crown of Scotland. A legal case, MacCormick v. Lord Advocate (1953 SC 396), was taken to contest the right of the Queen to title herself Elizabeth II within Scotland, arguing that to do so would be a breach of the Act of Union. The case, however, was lost on the grounds that the pursuers had not title to sue the Crown and the numbering of monarchs was part of the Royal Prerogative, and thus not governed by the Act of Union. It was suggested by Winston Churchill that future British monarchs should be numbered according to either their English or Scottish predecessors, whichever number is higher;[4] equivalent rules have not, however, been applied in the other Commonwealth realms.
(Images, Wikipedia)
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