Upon My Pontiff! (2013)

The Halo Halo! column from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once the tabloids had their teeth sunk into that nice, juicy horsemeat scandal story that had been dominating the headlines it needed something of global importance to knock it off the front pages. But on 11th February the prayers of the meat industry were answered. The fact that they’d been feeding us minced nag labelled as beef for ages and that no-one had a clue about its origin, or what equine drugs had been injected into it were forgotten, temporarily at least.

The tired and confused 85 year old Pope Benedict XVI had jacked in his job and until a successor could be appointed the world was without its direct link to God. This was almost unprecedented. Popes are supposed to go on until they die. They are infallible.

Pope Benedict became infallible in a puff of white smoke eight years ago and his resignation raised an important question. You may remember that episode of ‘Father Ted’ where a visiting bishop had a Grade Two holy relic, ‘the holy stone of Clonrichert’ rammed up his backside by Father Jack, and Father Ted asked ‘will it still be a Grade Two when it’s removed?’ The question now applies to the ex-Pope’s infallibility. Is he still infallible now?

It’s not a question we’ve had to consider recently. The last  Pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415, and before that in 1045 Pope Benedict IX resigned after being accused of ‘feasting on immorality’, committing ‘many vile adulteries and murders’ and of being ‘So vile, so foul’ and ‘so execrable’. He then sold the papacy to his godfather who became Pope Gregory VI, and himself resigned the following

year.

But at least it’s not bad news for all the doomsday theorists out there. The 12th century St Malachy, an Irish archbishop prophesied that there would only be 112 more Popes before the Last Judgment and Benedict XVI was the 111th. Watch this space.

NW