How to be a saintly pope

Over the last twelve years we have written many articles giving advice on "How to be a good pope", suitable for those of our readers who may one day be slapped in the face and told "Hey, you've been elected pope! Come on, sober up, get this white coat on, and step out onto the balcony!"

Still, all good things must come to an end and eventually you will "pass", as the Americans call it, or "kick the bucket, shuffle off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and join the choir invisible" in the British idiom. So, all that remains is to get canonized!

This is the image you want - none of that Hieronymus Bosch stuff!

Of course, not all popes get canonized. For every John XXIII or Paul VI who gets the white halo for turning up at Vatican II, there's a Leo XIII or Pius XII who just doesn't make the cut. (Personally, I am going for a sort of Carlo Acutis canonization, based on the quality of my blog, but that will have to wait a while yet.)

So what can you do to improve your chances of sycophantic praise from a man in an ivereigh tower? Here are a few rules.

1. Get yourself a title, like "Pope Fred the Humble", or "Pope Fred the Merciful". DO NOT get a title such as "Pope Fred the Heretic" or "Pope Fred the Bad-tempered".

2. Produce a string of immortal documents with titles like "Amorous Letitia" and "Trads Crushed" or even "Fiddling the Supplies" (an homage to Cardinal Becciu). You will at least be remembered.

3. Encourage a gollum-like creature to write numerous hagiographies while you are still alive. "Pope Fred the Great Redeemer". "The Lonely Goatherd", etc. He is bound to continue writing his stuff even after you die, with titles like "St Pope Fred's message to the world", "My life with St Pope Fred", and so on.

A good try, but you're not an angel, and you don't sniff volatile solvents.

4. Surround yourself with interesting people - R*pn*k, Z*nch*tta, P*r*lin, Fern*nd*z, R*che... so that you look good in comparison.

5. Appoint lots of bizarre people as cardinals, so that your "legacy" is assured when the next conclave is held. Good places to find these are prisons, mental homes, and Jesuit communities.

6. Organize synods - these keep the trouble-makers off your back, and if you give one a vague title like "Synod on synodismatic synodality" nobody will realise that it is a waste of time until it has been going for three years.

7. Show that you are a pope: not for the Catholic Church - anyone can do that - but for the whole world!

A pope for the whole world!

Follow this advice, and your halo is assured!

The Pope writes to the Beast

Scholars have long known that James J. Martin S.J. was the Beast of the Apocalypse, and it was no surprise to Francis-watchers this week when he received a letter from the Holy Father himself.

That letter in full.

Said the Beast, "The Pope is fully backing my campaign to support LGBT people, to allow them a sacramental marriage, and to permit them to become priests. (Oh what a giveaway!)"

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.

Pope Francis himself is to be the subject of a new book by John Cornwell. Having had his hit job on Pope Pius XII thorougly debunked, John feels far more confident of his new book "Xi's Pope" detailing how Francis sold out to communist China. We hope to persuade Cardinal "My letter of support from Pope Francis seems to be lost in the post" Zen to review it for this blog.

One of those meme things.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, anxious that he might ultimately be told not to receive Communion*, is planning to invade the Vatican and install a puppet pope (these days warmongering is his best chance of a Nobel Peace Prize). The choice seems to be between Cupich, Wuerl, Farrell, N.N. Tobin, and Uncle Wilt Gregory. Or one of the Muppets would do just as well.

*No, it's not going to happen.

The next pope?

The Dictator Pope

A new book by Marcantonio Colonna has revealed that behind the image of Pope Francis as a humble, merciful, foot-washing, baby-kissing uncle there lies the heart of a fiend.

A chaplain who once mocked Pope Francis disappeared without trace.

Amongst the revelations in this startling book are the following:

* General Galtieri never wanted to invade the Falkland Islands in 1982, but simply wished to devote himself to breeding llamas. However, the rector of the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel, one Jorge Bergoglio, pushed him into a costly war.

Francis issues threats against Fra' Matthew Festing's pet hamster.

* Pope Francis very humbly refuses to allow his friends to call him "Holy Father", preferring the term "Generalissimo Franco".

* Pope Francis refers to his Swiss Guards as the "Stormtroopers": there is a secret elite corps in the Swiss Guard that is responsible for assassinations.

Everyone fears the SG.

* The original title of Amoris Laetitia was Liber Terrae Dominationis - a manual of world domination - but the Pope was persuaded that this was too obvious.

* Two of the cardinals who submitted the Dubia to Pope Francis have died - as Oscar Wilde (or possibly Agatha Christie) put it, to lose one might be a misfortune, to lose two looks like a remarkable stroke of luck for someone.

Alt-comedian Steve Colbert swears allegiance to the Pope.

* All Jesuits are Licensed to Kill.

* Pope Benedict is being kept prisoner in an underground cell in the Vatican, emerging only for photo-opportunities with glasses of beer.

* The name "Francis" was chosen as a tribute to Francis Ford Coppola, the producer of the Godfather films.

"I like the hammer and sickle, but could you remove the religious bits?"

Of course, I haven't read the book yet, and it may be about something else entirely.

---

A joke. Anyway, so Pope Francis goes to confession, and the priest says "Let's cut this short, Holy Father. I've read the book."

Everyone who disagrees with me is Satan

When you're debating religious or political issues, I find that insulting your opponent is the best way to win the argument. For example, the people who imposed same-sex "marriage" on us - something that ten years earlier everyone had recognised as absurd - managed to get their way by means of the powerful slogan "Bigot! Bigot! Bigot!"

A happy couple (now long-since forgotten).

On Twitter it is well-known that everyone you disagree with is literally Hitler. There are lots of 127-year-old Germans with silly moustaches sitting around in sheds, shouting hateful Nazi slogans such as "We don't think much of the EU" and "Er, perhaps Donald Trump is a better bet than Hillary Clinton."

Is this literally YOU?

Curiously, this is mainly a left-wing thing, and you don't see conservatives labelling people as Stalin or Mao - probably because for so many lefties, these mass-murderers are still regarded as heroes. So the insult becomes a compliment.

"And this attachment is for hitting cardinals with."

So we come to Satan, himself. I must plead guilty on this score, since I have long referred to Mrs Clinton as Hell Cat, and regarded her as a tool of the Devil. This is mainly because I don't share her enthusiasm for dismembering live babies and selling the remains off commercially (this is what is technically known as "planned parenthood").

Still, there are apparently worse things that one can do. Pope Francis himself picked out what he considered one of the great evils of the world when he described parish secretaries as like "disciples of Satan" - we never got to the bottom of this little rant, but one theory is that he had decided to make one of his spontaneous 3 a.m. phone calls to a random victim, but had been told to get off the line, have a cup of cocoa, and go to sleep. EXACTLY what Satan would say.

"Oh Lord, I hope that's not the pope again.

And now he's at it again. Pope Francis told the Curia that resistance to reforms is inspired by the Devil. Since these reforms apparently include modernisation and gradualism (discernment), we have a problem here, as these are the sort of thing that previous popes were very much against. Odd, that.

Unfortunately, the Holy Father has now run out of superlatives. All I know is, I'm glad I don't work for the Roman Curia. Two years ago it was a listing of their "spiritual diseases" and now they're being told that they're ALL LITERALLY SATAN. Call this job satisfaction?

Je suis Eccles

After the distressing events of this week, you may be unsure how to react. We suggest a few possibilities: which of these slogans is yours?

Je suis Charlie

Look, I know some people are going to find my views controversial here, but I really feel I should stick my neck out and say that I am not a fan of murdering journalists and cartoonists. I mean, I found one of the Alex comic strips in the Telegraph totally pathetic and unfunny - well, most of them, actually - but I didn't feel I had to kill someone. Call me a woolly liberal who jumps on whatever bandwagon is going, but that's just how I am. If my views have caused offence, I apologise.

Je suis Charlie.

Je ne suis pas Charlie / Je suis non Charlie / Je non suis Charlie pas / Suis-je Charlie / Qui suis-je / Je suis la plume de ma tante (depending on level of fluency in French)

Of course I don't think those guys should have been murdered. However, unlike them I don't think that throwing bricks at the gendarmes in the 1968 riots was a pretty neat trick, and I've actually seen some of the repulsive anti-Catholic cartoons that the Charlie Hebdo staff produced. So I don't identify with them either. Sigh... I'll explain this again, slowly...

Je suis Ian

Of course my own magazine, Private Parts, which was originally intended as a radical alternative to Punch, is now as much part of the establishment as I am (I hope you watch me on my show Haven't we got any jokes for you?) We don't do much satire in the Parts these days, although we occasionally slip in a joke about child abuse whenever the Catholic Church is in the news. So we shan't be publishing anything that might actually upset someone, or even make them laugh.

The voice of the establishment.

Je suis François

Franchement, je suis hors de mon depth here. Vive la France séculaire, with its même-sexe mariage, l'abortion and le bashing de religion. Eh bien, les Musulhommes are bienvenus en general, particulierement les Musulhommes séculaires. However, I've got trop de femme trouble at le moment, and apart from sending in les gendarmes with all guns blazing je n'ai pas de grande stratégie pour dealing with a crise.

Je suis Jihad Jean

Ever since the days when I used to pull the heads off my dolls, I have been a fan of senseless violence, and defending the reputation of the prophet Mohammed is obviously a cause close to my heart. Starting a bloodbath is the only way to make people appreciate that Muslims are essentially peace-loving people, almost indistinguishable from paid-up members of the Church of England. And when all this is over I'm coming back to England to train as an actuary.

A lecherous, foul-mouthed alcoholic religious figure. I hope this was not based on any particular prophet.

Je suis Tony

As a full-time internet troll in good standing, I will question your motives whatever your reaction to the week's events. If you say nothing I will say you don't care, and if you make a comment I'll say you're attention-seeking. To those people who claim "Je suis Eccles", this is evidence that Brother Eccles - who, my spies tell me, is really Fr Jennifer Eccles, the transgendered Dominican referred to in the previous post - is still using dozens of sockpuppets.

Time to get nasty about ISIS

In general, this is a somewhat friendly as well as spiritually nourishing blog. We do occasionally tease one or two backsliders - for example, Tina Beattie the preposterous professor, Michael Campbell the bullying bishop, Vincent Nichols the cardboard cardinal, Richard Dawkins the drivelling don, and George Carey the absurd archbishop - but these people are not evil through and through, and our comments are kindly meant.

"Caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - or "Piggy" as he is known to his friends.

However, once in a while one has to write about real bastards: if Charlie Chaplin was able to mock Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator, then surely Eccles can get uncharacteristically nasty about Caliph Piggy, self-styled ruler of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and an Allah-fearing Sunni Muslim?

"Sunni" Hundal Jim, Piggy's second-in-command.

To be fair, Piggy is mad as well as bad - and I am not going to mention his disgusting personal habits, his loathsome infectious diseases, or the fact that he smells like a dead rat. Our hero is planning to march on Rome in his quest to establish an Islamic State across Europe. However, we know that there is no chance of that, as President Obama is on the case!

Obama takes charge of the crisis.

You may have heard the parable of the wheat and the darnel (or tares) in church today. It's all dressed up in agricultural metaphors, but the basic plot is that God sends Jesus down to the world to redeem mankind, and then Satan sends Mohammed along to poison everything. Well, Satan is certainly having a great time in Mosul at present, as the ISIS goes about its business of exterminating Christians.

An Arabic "nun" letter, used to denote a Christian's house.

The above picture shows Piggy's idea of a smiley emoticon - or at least a smiley as designed by a one-eyed cyclops. There is a school of thought that says that the false prophet Mohammed - as well as being nearly as obnoxious a character as Caliph Piggy - was in fact a one-eyed cyclops. We could not possibly comment.

Could this really be Mohammed?

Oh, and late news has come in that President Obama has left the golf course and is sorting out the situation. Contrary to what some people say, we do not believe that Obama is himself a Muslim - this would be incompatible with his own sincere self-worship. No, for him it is a matter of complete indifference whether the Muslims massacre the Christians, or not.

A Nobel Peace-Prize Winner at peace with the world.

Eccles and his sockpuppets

Brilliant detective work has at least revealed that Brother Eccles is a master of sockpuppetry. In addition to running 500 Twitter accounts - his ambition is to run the whole of Twitter single-handed - he also manages to write 200 different blogs on (mostly) religious subjects.

A Vatican-approved guide to puppetry.

Here are examples of some of the blogs that Eccles maintains. You will notice that they all have exactly the same style.

The Eccles Catholic donkey blog.

Today I took Vincent, the most troublesome of my 24 donkeys, on a walk to the Bar Moli in Finestrat, where we shared a bottle of gin to celebrate the feast of St Jude. Unfortunately, he was unable to walk home again, so I had to carry him back. Then when we got home, he logged onto Twitter and started insulting random people. I should never have given him his own computer.

The Eccles paranoid Chaplain blog.

What people don't realise is that deacons are priests. So priests should stop feeling superior to us. You wouldn't let me into your Superior Clergy Club, would you? Even though I made myself a biretta. What's more I don't want to hear anything from mothers who stay at home with babies. I'm a mother too, you know. Well, a father. And I stay at home all weekend. Except when I go out. I hate you all, especially the puppetmaster Eccles.

St Joan Blogger.

Hello, everyone, this is Auntie Joan, the writer, biographer, historian, poet, humourist, Olympic cyclist, brain surgeon and Renaissance woman. Auntie has had a very exciting week, as Pope Francis phoned her up to ask if she had any advice to give him on how to write encyclicals. Auntie told him, "Write everything in the third person, as it produces a vibrant prose style." Auntie is taking part in a discussion with Pope Francis on Vatican Radio soon, and she will make every effort to prevent the Holy Father from saying anything embarrassing - that should be easy, because he probably won't be able to get a word in edgeways!

The Eccles "Holy Smoke" blog.

Maria João Pires - found herself playing Mozart's 4th horn concerto.

Take a look at this ancient video that someone sent me. It shows the pianist Maria João Pires in a terrible dilemma. She was expecting to play a Mozart Piano Concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, but when the orchestra started, she found that they were playing his 4th Horn Concerto. Resourceful to the last, she grabbed a French horn from a member of the orchestra, and gallantly blew her way through the concerto. Said the orchestra member, a Mr Flanders, "I've lost that horn - I know I was using it yesterday. I've lost that horn, lost that horn, found that horn ... gorn."

The same thing happens to me sometimes. I have prepared an in-depth article on custard for the Telegraph, when the editor comes to my desk and says, "Damian! It's Catholicism this week." Being an experienced journalist, I take out my blue pencil, change all the references to custard, add something about the impending murder of the Nuncio, and - voilà! - in 5 minutes I have the piece that I was asked for.

The Protect-the-Eccles Pope blog.

The Tablet ludicrously misreports Bishop Conry's meeting with ACTA to discuss their recommendation of abortion as a human right, in an attempt to ban the Bible in all English dioceses, while Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor's refusal to attend a SHAG week in Rome sends out mixed signals to Enda Kenny, according to the BBC.

Protect-the-Eccles Comment: Phew! This one's too much for me.

The Hermit of Cottingley blog.

The autumn colloquium of the British Province of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy was very well attended, but some delegates found that it was disruptive to hear cries of "Let me in, I'm a deacon!" outside the window, as we sang Gregorian chants in the bar at night. From now on, the Confraternity has agreed to admit deacons as well, except for ones who are obviously insane.

See? All these well-regarded blogs were really by Eccles, all along.

2 Chronicles

Welcome back, class. I hope you are enjoying the Eccles Bible Project, as we work our way through the Bible, explaining it to beginners. Now today's book of the Bible contains more Jewish history, and duplicates a lot of what we've seen already, so last week I set you all some homework - read 2 Chronicles and write an essay on it.

Gervais! Put your feet down. And where's your essay, boy?

Ah, Dawkins, our star pupil. What's your essay about? Why Solomon wasn't as wise or as rich as what I am. Yes, that's just about on-topic. In 2 Chronicles we do get nine chapters about Solomon, building a temple, running a fleet of chariots bearing the message "THERE'S DEFINITELY A GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING - UNLESS YOU'RE AN ATHEIST," and getting rich from the royalties on his father's psalms. But your essay seems to be mostly about you, and why you should be King too. Could do better, lad.

Not really a useful guide to the 10th century BC.

Now, Fry, I know you once wrote a book called Moab is my washpot, which is a line taken from the psalms. However, when I read it, it seemed to be all about you rather than any of the people we're looking at today. So what is your essay entitled? Rehoboam or Jeroboam - which had the cutest boam? I've got a nasty feeling about this one. Let's move on.

Hari? You have an exclusive interview with King Asa of Judah, in which he tells you that he did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God? Splendid. We'll read that later.

The chaplin demonstrates a liturgical dance.

Oh yes, Marvin the paranoid deacon. You were sent here on a refresher course, I gather. Do stop spitting at your neighbours. So you've written something for us, explaining how the entire Bible was written by a sockpuppet of Eccles? And you have invented some characters in the style of your favourite newspaper, Viz? That's like the Tablet but a little more Catholic, right? Brilliant idea! Let's see what's on offer.

King Silly Man the not-so-wise. Who is it based on? A boy at school who borrowed your pencil 35 years ago and forgot to give it back? Crumbs, that's biting satire, well done. He'll be seeking counselling, I'm sure.

J. Whosa Fatty, the overweight king of Judah. Ha ha ha, brilliantly witty. Yes, it's true that a certain priest is a little overweight; I'm sure he'll recognise himself there. Yes, I know, isn't it terrible how priests look down on deacons? Well, on some deacons. Well, on you.

Neighbourhood-nurser and Baby Lon. Oh, you're killing me. A woman with a baby, whom you hate intensely because she has got more friends than you? That'll teach her to humiliate you!

Neighbourhood-nurser and Baby Lon (ho ho!)

Well, we'd better stop there. Next time we'll look at the book of Ezra, which may be a bit more spiritually nourishing.