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.