The Pope - one year on

A year ago the Pope shocked the world by being just about the only world leader not to use Twitter to make an important announcement – he’s off!

Pope news!  The Pope announced he is to retire.  This came as something of a shocking surprise for, well, absolutely everybody, as the firm belief held by all was that Popes were supposed to expire rather than retire.  Following the announcement there was a lot of speculation about why the Pope had taken this unusual red-shoed step.  The common reason; being able to spend more time with your grandchildren, does not apply in this case and, if that is the real reason, is unlikely to form part of any official press release from the Vatican.

The announcement allowed the media to do what they increasingly love to do most of all, which is look up the entry for the subject they are reporting on Wikipedia so that we don’t have to, rephrase it to avoid copyright infringement, don’t bother with a fact check because in this case the more outlandlish the reported fact the more likely it is to be true, and then broadcast it.  There was also  endless speculation, especially about who the new Pope will be.  Let’s be clear, speculation is simply gossip distributed by people wearing ties.

The most intense speculation was about whether the new Pope will be ‘non European’.  ‘Non European’ means coming from either Africa or South America and is possibly newspeak for ‘Black’.  One could tell from the way the newsreaders said the phrase that they were not sure about it, is it a racial slur, or just a quick way to describe somebody not of European heritage?  Safe bet is that if it is the latter, then it’s the former too but hey, who’s got the time to say ‘from Africa or South America’ and, if you do, is it ‘Africa or South America’ or ‘South America or Africa’?  Better to just say ‘foreign’ and nod meaningfully, like you would if you were in a pub in the home counties.

An African or South American Pope would, apparently, have been a big deal, but hardly a surprise.  Whilst Europe has lurched towards secularism, mostly as a result of smirking smart-arses writing the word ‘Jedi’ next to ‘Religion?’ on their census form and thinking themselves positively Wildeian, Roman Catholicism is very much a strong force in the emerging religious markets of Africa and South America (or South America or Africa depending on your geographical bias).  This is because they are both full of developing countries where the promise of a better afterlife, possibly including meat for dinner three times a week and a whole month going by without some ghastly ethnic violence or natural disaster, is very attractive.  No wonder these places like religion, it’s just like the old testament.

Of course, the real reason that the Pope decided to step down was probably connected to Twitter.  It’s one thing to get a news report, every day, that another person in your organisation is a peado, it’s quite another to have to face it when you fire up Twitter because you just have to retweet that link to a hilarious Youhootube clip of an squirrel and a row of vodka shots, and find that are the subject of quite a number of messages referring to you as ‘kiddifiddler in chief’.  

When you’re Pope and find out that in addition to having fewer followers than Stephen Fry you get droves of unfollowers every time another peadopriest is exposed, it can get a bit wearing.  

For any figure of authority, Twitter should be treated like a toxic substance, that it is the source of a cavalcade of condemnation is the polite way to put it.  The reality is that if you attract the ire of Twitter, a river of shit meets a tide of abuse and, accordingly, surfing is unpleasant.

Being Pope is, I suspect, something of a thankless task.  It’s something that you take on once you are past retirement age (like a job at B&Q but without the benefit of nicking stuff to supplement your wages) and you get the blame for everything and the credit for nothing.  It’s unfair, and unkind, to expect somebody to work until they drop, not even B&Q do that, officially.  

Could it be magic?

What image does the phrase ‘papal audience’ conjure for you? Possibly you have an image of some Francis Bacon type pope sitting on a throne in a room lit by flickering firelight and intrigue, with plenty of gothic woodwork for scheming cardinals to hide behind, while you, slightly off your tits from incense inhalation, do ring kissing and ask that he use his influence to shave you a couple of years off your time in hell. Or have your views been coloured by too many ‘an audience with…’ tee vee specials, and you expect a few anecdotes and finishing on a song?

For the parents of Madeleine ‘Maddie*’ Macann, it meant standing with the crowd, waiting until the ex-nazi in question shuffled down the line to them and then a few words and the blessing of a picture of their missing daughter. On the one hand, the ‘tapas two’ must be feeling pretty grim, on the other hand - think what that picture will fetch on eBay.

I’m not sure exactly what the audience with the Pope was meant to achieve. My only thought was, if you wanted to understand the mind of a paedophile, you’d do a lot worse than speaking to a bloke who runs an organisation chock-full of them. It’s a bit like Clarice Starling going to see Hannibal Lector in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ to gain some insight into the mind of a serial killer…and a serial overactor in the form of Anthony Hopkins.

The Pope apparently blessed a picture of the little girl. What this is supposed to achieve I’m not sure - it smacks of sympathetic magic straight out of the dark ages. If they are resorting to that, are they also visiting a voodoo priest who is jamming nails into the photofit of the suspected abductor?

* The family are at pains to call the little girl by her full name, the tab tabbie tabloids prefer to use the abbreviated form - possibly because they can save space to put it in bigger print, possibly because they can save space to advertise their ‘save three tokens and get a free can of lager’ promotion. Probably because they realise that their readers will only hear family members addressed by their full names on rare occasions - christenings, weddings and court appearances. For funerals the shortened version is preferred, as it’s far more economical to have a wreath spelling out ‘nan’ than ‘beloved grandmother’.