FRANK IN SENSU STRICTU

THE NEW BISHOP OF ROME, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires and perhaps former chemical engineer before entering into the much-hated fraternity of the Jesuits, promises to be something of a revolution in the Roman Catholic Church. As indeed all popes tend to promise before they become bogged down under the weight of trying to supervise (when they try) the most labyrinthine, underhand, corrupt and incomprehensible organisation that exists on the face of the Earth. If it is in any manner a reflection of what life after death may be then Heaven help us.

 

HOWEVER, AS IS ALWAYS STATED each time a new pope is "elected", he may well bring something new to the Roman Catholic Church.

 

THE MOST OBVIOUS FACTOR which differentiates him from the last cluster of popes is that he is the first one for over fifty years who is not openly a war criminal, given the fact that he has not been a member of the Curia, which, when not helping the Nazis outright at the time of World War II, did their best to conceal the fact that the Vatican either concealed, contrived to conceal or in fact destroyed documentation detailing the papacy's involvement in the horrors of the Holocaust and other sundry mass executions in Italy.

 

ONE IMAGINES THAT A FURTHER feather in his mitre might be the fact that -- to date -- there are no widespread stories of priests buggering young boys in Argentina, unlike the churches in Europe.

 

YET AS I WRITE I AM WATCHING a news item suggesting that our good Francis I was not, as one might state, wholly forthcoming in his defence of the thousands of people who disappeared during the ruthless, bloody dictatorship in Argentina. Everything changes but everything stays the same.

HUGO'S THERE?

ONE SHOULD NEVER SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD, I have always heard; and I am perfectly prepared to stick to this maxim, which means that I should, in theory, not have anything off-colour to state about the manic, histrionic, corrupt and shameless "politician" who was the leader of the sub-third world banana republic that was generously called Veneziola (in homage to its being similar to Venice) by over-optimistic Tuscan explorer Amerigo Vespucci in 1499.

 

HUGO RAFAEL CHÁVEZ FRÍAS is as I write being given a send-off that makes many people think of Lenin, although I personally tend to think of Stalin. I am currently being reminded that Chávez is "not dead", but that "all Venezuela is Chávez". (Which, of course, allows me to speak ill of him.)

 

I MUST CONFESS THAT I HAVE NOT spent a great deal of the last fourteen years trying to find out what President Hugo Chávez of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been up to; and I am prepared to listen to arguments on both sides of the divide. Occasionally I have seen bits of what he has been saying on TV, and my attention has been lost very quickly.

 

I HAVE READ ACCOUNTS of his raising the standard of living among the poor of the country, and ones which state that the homicide and robbery rates have never been so high in Venezuela, particularly in Caracas, as during his period of tenure. I have also read that he managed to build up a personal fortune of over 200 million dollars.

 

AND SO I SHOULD LEAVE IT AT THAT. Were it not for the fact that when a leader dies and has literally millions of toothless and apparently brainless supporters prepared to take a week off work in order to traipse past his rotting corpse I tend to imagine that something is rotten in the state in question.

 

(My picture shows Jack Parrot, from the film "Robbers of the Caribbean")

MEAT YOUR MAKER

THE METEOR WHICH CRASHED TO THE EARTH in an unpronounceable town somewhere in the shadows of the Urals is obviously yet another sign from above that Heaven is not very happy about the shenanigans going on down here at the moment involving the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church from the top to the bottom -- all equally at fault in their non-fulfillment of their Lent and Easter duties.

NO SENSIBLE PERSON will believe that this extremely unusual event is not a sign of displeasure from on high. According to NASA, the European Space Agency, CNN, SKY NEWS and all of the observatories spattered about the globe and manned by bearded loonies who see nothing in their lives other than "stars, man, it's just like flickering lights, man, but there's life there, man", no one saw this coming. How does a two-ton object hit the ground without anyone noticing beforehand?

SIMULTANEOUS TO THIS CURIOUS EVENT, we have the "meat scandal", as the BBC News team terms it. It has now been discovered that a considerable part of our diet over recent years -- not everyone, of course, only those who ate in pubs or hamburger restaurants, or bought hamburgers, meatballs, sausages, frozen foods, pies or pasties in supermarkets, football grounds or dodgy cafés -- may have been affected by eating Arkle, Red Rum, Black Beauty or Noddy the Blackpool Donkey and even may have otherwise been scoffing on the equine unbeknown.

TIME HAS A LOGIC OF ITS OWN. We are now in Lent, when we should not, in all conscience, eat meat except on Sundays until Holy Thursday after early evening mass. My good lady wife and I have decided to give processed meat a wide berth for the next 36 days, and I imagine that in terms of health it will do us no harm. Whether this brings us closer to our Creator or not remains to be seen. So we will see.

(My photo shows the famous portrait of Pope Benedict XVI by Francis Bacon)

NON HABEMUS PAPAM

ON THE 14th OF SEPTEMBER 2010 I wrote a few words on this blog about Joseph Alois Ratzinger, our current pope, at least until 8 o'clock on the 28th of February. At the time my opinion was that this gentleman was a bit of a shifty character when seen in the wrong light.

 

YET NOTHING COULD HAVE PREPARED ME for the shock of hearing that a pope could resign his position. There are increasingly few certainties in the modern world, and the fact that a pope was elected "for life" was among these. The soon-to-be Mr Ratzinger has removed one more of these certainties, and has added fuel to the fire of the lunatics who believe that the world will end after one more pope after one who resigns, a prophecy put about by St Malachy in 1139.

 

ACCORDING TO MALACHY, the next pope will be the "final Peter" and we will presumably have to get on with preparing for an economic, spiritual and emotional Armageddon over the coming years, in the meantime readying ourselves for the life to come.

 

ONE MAY FIND SOME PARALLELS in the absurd action being taken by the present soon-to-be-ex-pope-Benedict XVI and the odd, not to say queer, times of the last resignation of a pope in 1415. At that time the Roman Church was divided over several issues of dogma and attitude, a chaos of moral and spiritual values that had seen no equal for centuries. So much so that there were three "popes" who claimed legitimacy, Benedict, John and Gregory. Gregory XII was the one who stepped down in order to allow some leeway for Antipope Benedict or Antipope John to step up to the plate. In the end the whole thing went awry when a third pope was chosen.

 

HISTORY, WE SOMETIMES HEAR, REPEATS ITSELF. We daily hear of paedophile priests. The Roman Church seems to be completely out of touch for a growing number of people. Economically, Europe has not seen such difficult times since before World War II. Yet the richest institution on the planet after the Church of the Latter Day Saints is offering nothing but "prayer" and "solidarity" to those who are watching their lives get flushed down the toilet, in a country where the biggest robber baron of the last century laughs in the face of authority and decency.

 

MR RATZINGER WILL STEP DOWN from office soon; how would he have felt if Jesus his saviour had said, from the Cross of his Crucifixion, "That's enough suffering and saviouring for now. I'd like to resign."?

 

IT IS NOT A MATTER OF BELIEF, but one of coherence and consistency. One can only hope that we are not about to witness another Great Western Schism. Even so, how will it sit with those who swore allegiance to this shifty, irresponsible German when he is still alive and we have a "new pope". Perhaps Italian TV can organise a debate show with the two of them, moderated by today's third pope, Silvio Berlusconi.

THE TIMBUK TWO

THERE ARE THOSE WHO OPINE that we should make our presence felt on the international front as the statesmen standing up for righteousness and general do-gooding that needs to be done on the world stage, even if this means getting involved in what has been termed as "Britain's Vietnam" in the North of Africa.

 

THE VIETNAM REFERENCE is not without a less than innocent and careless whisper when it is stated by the American press, given that what they mean by "Vietnam" is something that was ballsed up by the French and then the Americans had to come in and try to help them out. And even so had to deal with snarling and spitting arrogance from the French who had hitherto "ruled" the colony and run it into the ground.

 

SOMETHING SIMILAR SEEMS to be on the cards in relation to the French ex-colonies in North Africa. Not a single one of these territories seems to have been settled sensibly. The French "forces" (I am being a little generous) were either forced out, hurried out, shot at or -- more usually -- bribed to leave their colonies in the fifties and sixties.

 

BUT NOW DAVID "DAVE" CAMERON has decided to step in to help someone, without really making clear whom. This was announced in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Then arose Sir Peter Tapsell, the longest-standing member of the House and someone with a belief that we can learn from the past.

 

AS HE STATED: "As my right honourable friend sets off on his pacific mission to Algeria, will he, with his great historical knowledge, bear in mind that when Louis Philippe sent his eldest son on a mission to Algeria in the 1840s it took a century, massive casualties, the overthrow of the Third Republic and the genius of General de Gaulle to get the French army out of the Algerian desert!"

 

NONE OF THIS SUGGESTS, of course, that the United Kingdom may end up mopping up the shit left behind by the French. Heaven forbid. But perhaps one might watch, as they say, this space.

CHARLES THE OBLIVIOUS

THE RECENT "VISIT" OF PRINCE CHARLES and his concubine Camilla to the London Underground Metropolitan Railway only confirms how out of touch these people are. Charles had no idea what an "Oyster" was as he slipped it into the slot allowing him to go down into the underground. Many people throughout the shires will also not be familiar with the term, but in London it means "your bus and metro pass."

 

IT APPEARS FROM THE FOOTAGE taken by our good media representatives that our king-in-waiting was not too sure of what to do with his oyster when he went down. One wonders whether people more intelligent than I might wish to come up with jokes about this last sentence. Far be it from me to do so.

 

OF COURSE, IN MANY COUNTRIES one would be happy to see a constitutional monarchy showing its benign and benevolent side towards the "common folk" as Camilla once described us. But it might have been nicer if she had shown up as a full-time paid-up concubine with her full-time paid-up husband to have a drink in one of the most run-down pubs in Toxteth in Liverpool. Or even if Charles could have had more than a sip of his half-pint of Guinness when he had the chance.

THE DESERT SONG (VERSION TWO)

IN A REVIVAL of a great musical which once thrilled hundreds of thousands of theatre-goers and conscripted soldiers of Spain, France and Italy as they jollied their tenor and alto soprano voices into the Sahara in order to liberate and civilize the peoples of the Rif, of Morocco, of the Protectorate of Tetouan and of the Kingdom of Libya, we now have a new version, with new stars on the stage, in a hit that will, as they sometimes say, “run and run”. Just watch.

 

RAUNCHY LEON “LION OF THE DESERT” PANETTA, the ageing yet feisty ex-head of the CIA and United States Defense Secretary, as well as milksop, confused, pasty-faced loon Philip Hammond, the British Secretary of State for Defence, are as I write holding a joint press conference outlining how they will “knuckle down” and “sort out” the Al Qaeda bands of “rebels” who are trying to turn the North of Africa into what they call a “safe haven” for terrorists.

 

THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN, rather sensibly, have never really bothered too much with the Maghreb region of Africa, as they both realized that the shifting sands of both time and place mean that the type of colonialism that both countries favoured was never going to cut the ice in an area where people wandered about on camels with masks over their faces, indulged in buggery and could make a date last three days. This was never going to be the market for British goods or American proselytism.

 

YET THE FRENCH AND SPANISH, perhaps without such practical approaches in their minds, saw fit to try to colonise most of the Sahara. The result of all this, as could only be expected, was a series of long and bloody wars between Spain and Morocco and between France and Algeria. Italy managed to keep out of harm’s way mainly by simply abandoning Abyssinia when a couple of the locals started to show their tooth.

 

NOW, HOWEVER, THINGS HAVE GONE PEAR SHAPED and these useless ex-colonial powers have had to call in the big boys due to the heavy-handed and ham-fisted actions of the Mali and Algerian “authorities”. I am not sure that I think that involving British and/or American troops in the minefield of Maghreb politics is a good idea – and Panetta and Cameron are on my side. But we surely cannot have unwashed, flea-bitten rascals holding our enterprises to ransom, can we? So we must not give in to the French.

 

(My picture shows international terrorist, the much feared Moktar Hollande El-Moktar, allegedly responsible for the latest crisis)