Fill up on the Pope!

As petrol reaches €1.43 a litre in Italy (£1.24) Romans have noticed that in the Vatican City, which doesn't charge petrol duty or VAT, it is only €1, a saving of 30%.

But you need a special card to get it.

The Vatican garage is doing great business as people try to find a relative or friend amongst the 546 citizens and 1,800 employees to help them fill up.

The worst crime in the world

The subject of an interesting short story by GK Chesterton, the worst crime in the world was generally thought to be parricide.

For the Pope, who is in Malta celebrating the 1950th anniversary of St Paul’s shipwreck and his therefore unintentional evangelising of the island (it’s about the only thing to do when stuck in a place like Malta) the worst crime in the world is despair.

Papa Ratzinger is getting rather a tough time in Malta and the old boy, with his plea for the whole church to do penance (it’s not ordinary Roman Catholics who have been molesting children, is it Joseph?) is looking increasingly out of his depth. In fact he is looking desperate.

What the out of touch clergy doesn’t understand is that in the modern world the worst crime in the world is not parricide, not despair, but paedophilia, followed closely by smoking in a public place, denying the global warming shtick and receiving a bonus.

The Vatican again

Now Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, says that the evidence is that 60% of paedophile cases involving priests are with boys, 30% with girls (who the other 10% are with I don't know). Other organisations claim that most involved girls.

Whatever, the subject is on the front page of the newspapers, yet again.

The thing to do, Tarcisio old love, when finding yourself in a hole, is to stop digging or, better still, to hand your spade to someone above so he can fill the hole, and you, in.

The Vatican: how not to manage news

The slogan, currently popular in British politics ‘They just don’t get it, do they?’, seems at the moment particularly apposite to the Roman Catholic Church.

Consider this. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, pronouncing on the recent crisis, has said that paedophilia is not the result of clerical celibacy but of homosexuality. He may be right that it is nothing to do with celibacy but the rest of the statement is of such unparalleled stupidity it takes the breath away. Never mind the lack of any scientific backing for the statement, it seems to imply that a male priest interfering with a female child would be normal.

I find it hard to believe that someone at such an exalted level could believe this, but even harder to see why, even if he believed it, he thought it sensible to mouth off on the subject. What can this do except heap further opprobrium on an organisation many of whose supporters believe needs reforming, as well as keeping this surely unwelcome subject on the front page of the newspapers?

I say ‘unparalleled stupidity’ but Bertone’s diatribe is unquestionably matched by that of Giacomo Babini, the retired Bishop of Grosseto, who believes the entire scandal is part of a Zionist conspiracy against the Church. Good grief.

I think the best we can hope for is that both men were drunk.

I have argued for some time that the Holy See urgently needs a competent spin doctor, to design and teach the agreed line to take, and to stop these idiots opening their mouths in public. Peter Mandelson, the best, looks as if he will have a bit of time on his hands after 6th May, although I don’t know how the Vatican would react to employing someone whose nickname is ‘The Prince of Darkness’ and who is a Jewish homosexual. A good idea, perhaps, and it certainly wouldn't worry Mandelson, but surely there is a Vatican employee versed in these (dark) arts?

Catholicism: the final solution

With every day seeming to bring more bad news for the Roman Catholic Church, amidst failing confidence, falling attendance and collapsing revenues, I think the Vatican needs to take a deep breath and go for a complete rebranding exercise. Here are my suggestions in simple steps.

I A change of name from the traditional European based ‘Church of Rome’. Something shorter and punchier like ‘The Cathies’

II The Pope is out of touch, out of date and seems to have some connection with this child molestation business which, innocent or guilty, he can’t shake off. The traditional way of getting rid of a bad pope has been for one of the faithful to put a pillow over his head while he is sleeping, then announcing it as a heart attack. The old boy is in his eighties and has had a good run.

III The new pope should be from outside the traditional papabili. An obvious example would be South America, where a large number of the faithful live, but I favour China. Given that Chinese cardinals are made in pectore or secretly it could be pretty well anyone, for example the head of the Chinese branch of the public relations company I intend to set up.

IV The arrival of the new pope would be accompanied by the greatest evangelical push since the Third Crusade. Like the crusades this would be the subject of co-financing from outside the Church, western industry chipping in to create a little religious and civil unrest, helping take Chinese workers’ minds off the job of competing with our car industry.

Hollywood chips in with a blockbuster biopic of an early Chinese saint martyred by the evil Mandarin regime. Starring Blad Pitt wearing a silly beard (oh? You say he has got one already?) it screens all over China and generates a deep and occasionally explosive religious fervour

V The Chinese Pope, or Chope, would announce that all paedophilia had now ceased and that anything which in the future looks suspect is merely a secret initiation rite.

VI The astonishing cashflow generated by evangelising upwards of a billion people who bring a couple of yuan to church every Sunday could be used to fund a more traditional religious body, based, for example, in its own state in a Mediterranean country. For a while, like the late Roman Empire, the Church would have two heads, eventually reducing to only one.

VII My own fees are modest: plenary indulgence and the keys to the Vatican wine cellar.

Berlu and the Church

I can't help wondering if Silvio Berlusconi, normally politically sure-footed, hasn't picked the wrong enemy. He was due to attend the annual Celestine Pardon, as part of a rapprochement with the Holy See, but has pulled out, after Cardinal Bertone the Vatican Secretary of State, cancelled a dinner due to be held afterwards. The Vatican is concerned about the stories surrounding Berlusconi and an impending divorce, although to be fair to Silvio it is his wife trying to divorce him.

Berlusconi is suing La Repubblica, the Italian equivalent of the Guardian, for presenting innuendo as fact and suggesting he could be open to blackmail (it was La Repubblica who paid the prostitute to bring a tape recorder with her) but it isn't that which is the problem. The case will take so long to come to court that the matter will be forgotten.

What looks like an uncharacteristic strategic mistake from the normally cunning premier is that Vittorio Feltri, editor of Il Giornale which is owned by Berlusconi's brother, has made an attack on Dino Boffo, editor of Avvenire, the bisops' newspaper, saying he was unable to make moral judgments because he was a homosexual who was accused of harasssment and paid a fine in a plea bargain to avoid going to jail. The paper claims to be in possession of the court documents and, just to make it more complicated, it is the harassment if a woman in Terni he was accused of - he was having a relationahip with her husband. But whatever the rights and wrongs, Boffo has important friends.

Berlu has already dissociated himself from the piece but I think it was ill advised. The Church is widely respected here and the deal is that the people are allowed to criticise it privately but their leaders must show respect.

Let us see how Berlu gets out of this.