2013 and all that (part 2)

Continued from Part 1.

The story so far: Pope Francis the humble has been in the chair of St Peter for two years, and he is just getting started.

Francis was now tiring of religious teaching, and so he turned his attention to the environment instead. It was time for a papal encyclopaedia, which he called Loudhailer Si' because he went around shouting about it. He had realised that many Catholics were going to end up in a hot place if they did not mend their ways - possibly at the North Pole, where there were now no penguins at all.

"Next time, we're all going by bicycle."

Francis was very keen on sinners, and so he organized a Second Sinner of the Family, which, like the first one, was instructed to think of new sins that could be tried out. We shall tell of the results later.

However, Francis had not forgotten the faithful Catholics who still believed in the Bible, and so he encouraged them with new cries of "rigid!" This was a Good Thing.

At the end of the year, there was a great celebration of Creation, and pictures of baboons and toads were projected onto the walls of St Peter's in Rome. At first, people assumed that they were images of Cardigan Marxist, Cardigan Dandruff, and similar Eminems (as cardigans are called). In the end, it was realised that they were simply creatures to be venerated, similar to the "rigid" saints that had previously been respected.

Which cardigan is this?

It was also the start of the Year of Murky, in which murkiness was to be celebrated throughout the Catholic world. Churches were asked to have special "Doors of Murky" by which the faithful could enter to show their devotion to murky. If no such door was available, the faithful were encouraged to climb in through a Window of Murky, or down a Chimney of Murky. These were called spiritual exercises.

The two-headed cyclops logo, designed by Marko Rupnik SJ, a great Catholic hero.

But it was not long before the Church forgot about being Murky, as after the Sinner of the Family Pope Francis released his magnum opus, which he called Amorous Letitia, in honour of a girl he had known in Argentina in the days before he became a priest. Latin scholars tell us that it also means "The Joy of Sex".

Not all Catholics understood Amorous Letitia. The bits where families were encouraged to spend time together, washing the cats, talking to the goldfish, or kissing the car goodnight, were clear enough, but there were doubts about whether adultery was now encouraged, and whether divorce was the answer if the wife snored.

The Spirit of Amorous Letitia.

So four cardigans bravely wrote to the pope asking if he could clarify Catholic teaching for them. To a Jesuit, being asked to clarify *anything* is a mortal insult, and in a spirit of Murky, Francis pretended that the letter (known as the five "Do-be-clears") had been lost in the post.

So we shall never know whether adultery is a sin, especially since two of the Do-be-clear cardigans died soon after impertinently asking for guidance.

In the next part, Pope Francis appoints some strange new cardigans, cuts a deal with President Xi-who-must-be-obeyed, and takes up the worship of Pachanonsense.

2013 and all that (part 2)

Continued from Part 1.

In the third year of his reign, Pope Francis the Humble produced a papal encyclopedia, called Laudato Si'. Since they did not speak Italian, most people thought that this was a new type of pasta, and were very disappointed when it turned out to be something totally indigestible.

Re-arrange these letters into something spiritually nourishing.

Laudato Si' was all about the environment, and the Pope humbly explained that flying in aeroplanes and giving press conferences was bad for Mother Earth; indeed, every time a journalist asked a question, a polar bear burst into flames. Also, he explained that biodiversity was more important than anything else, even religion. This led to a great increase in the number of pandas, blue whales, and Sumatran tigers adopted by Catholics.

Pope Francis adopts a rare tiger.

It was also time for the second Sinner of the Family, so that lots of bishops could come to Rome and see which sins they most enjoyed. The bishops voted for their favourite sins, and in the end Cardigan Baldacchino told them they had got it all wrong, and that Pope Francis would have to write a humble Apostolic Expiration called Amorous Letitia, to tell them what they should have said.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, being a merciful as well as a humble pope, decided that the Church should have a Year of Mercy. This was to be the first of a series of years celebrating the things Pope Francis held sacred, and future ones would be called the Year of Pizza, Year of Football, and Year of Tango.

Auditions for the Year of Tango.

In the Year of Mercy, all churches had to have a door called the Door of Mercy for people to enter by if they were feeling merciful. Those who did not feel merciful were allowed to enter by the Window of Cruelty instead.

Pope Francis's reign was known for the custom of using silly logos for all events, because all the sensible logos had already been used. One of his advisers said "Let's use a logo of a two-headed Cyclops on skis - we haven't had that one before, have we?" After checking the records of all Catholic logos used, all the way back to the 1st Century, it was confirmed that nobody had thought of that logo before, not even St John when he wrote his Logos Doctrine. So the logo was adopted, and the Catholic faithful were briefly united in crying for mercy whenever they saw it.

Mercy! Mercy!

In the next part, we meet Amorous Letitia; also Burke is Dubious, and Fra' Matthew stops Feasting.

2013 and all that (part 1)

With apologies to W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman.

Pope Francis, a humble pope.

In 2013 Pope Benedict surprised everyone by resigning as pope and forgetting to die. Thus he was still allowed to wear his white coat, and did not have to be put in a tomb. The cardigans gave him the job of Emergency Pope, and met to choose a successor.

A humble pope, wearing the papal tiara.

Having had a saintly pope (John-Paul II) and a learned pope (Benedict), the cardigans decided try something completely different and choose their pope from Argentina, a man known as General Belgrano. He was strongly supported by the St Gay Mafia, which included Cardigan Dandruff, Cardigan Casper the unfriendly ghost, and Cardigan Comic Mercy-O'Conman.

General Belgrano was known to be a humble man, and indeed his papal motto was NON ESTIS HUMILES, EGO SOLUS HUMILIS, which means "You are not humble, only I am humble." He chose the name Francis in honour of Francis Ford Coppola, the producer of the Holy Father films.

The Holy Father.

One of the first actions of the new pope was to attack the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, who had been behaving too immaculately. Fr Fidelio Volpone was appointed to help them become less immaculate, so he helped them by dismantling the order. When he had done as much damage as possible, Fr Volpone decided that he had achieved his life's ambition, and died.

In the second year of his humble reign, Pope Francis held the first of two Sinners of the Family, which were meetings of bishops who wanted to try out new sins. A very powerful cardigan called Baldacchino was appointed to run these Sinners, and to tell the bishops which new sins they would be encouraged to commit.

Being a humble pope, Francis then decided that it was time to give an equal opportunity of humility to Cardigan Burke: it is said that he was jealous of him because he was an intelligent man who had read the Bible. Cardigan Burke had been a member of the Congratulation for Bishops, which chooses new bishops, but this was too important a post for a humble man, so the Pope told him to look after the Order of Malta instead. As we shall see, this was all part of a devious plan to cause more humiliation for Burke, although this took two more years.

How do you make a Maltese cross? A problem that Pope Francis solved two years later.

Finally, at about this time Francis realised that he had been elected to sort out the problems of the Roman Curious, who were the people who did all the hard work in the Catholic Church. Being a humble pope he identified fifteen disorders from which they suffered, including Spiritual Alzheimer's, Numinous Measles, amd Gnostic Arthritis. However, apart from insulting them as part of his Christmas greetings, he took no further action at that time.

In the next part we meet Loudhailer Si', the 2nd Sinner of the Family, and the Year of Murky.

The arms of a humble pope.