The Vicar of Rome Meets The Big Satan

Last week Pope Benedict XVI met with George W. Bush at the Vatican. Dogmatic spiritual leader meets ignoramus war monger...what an interesting conversation they must have had! But the meeting got me thinking back to the death of Pope John Paul II and the nomination of his successor. On April 19, 2005 I was in New York attending a meeting in our offices on the 36th floor (overlooking Times Square) when white smoke streamed from a chimney over the Sistine Chapel and the announcement was mad that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would be the 265th Pope. In our meeting room we put CNN on the video projector and watched this all unfolding over lunch.

Here are a couple of photos I took that afternoon...

As a pupil at Christian Brothers College, Mount Edmund in South Africa, one of my primary influences was my history teacher, Janice Farquharson. Over the past 30 years she has become a great friend and mentor, and during the course of Ratzinger's accession, she wrote this wonderful piece to commemorate the event:

So here goes, typed out again, my tribute to the Papcy.

VATICAN VERSE
- Inspired by the Election of Cardinal Ratzinger as Benedict XVI 19/4/05 -

Sing a song of incense
Voting for a Pope.
Will they OK Condoms?
What an effing hope!

Sing a song of Cardinals
All in red they grapple,
Busy picking a new Pope
In the Sistine Chapel.

Sing a song of Conclaves
Men of great moral fibre,
Finding yet another Pope
On the banks of Tiber.

Sing a song of Prelates
Catholic to a man;
Busy being celibate
In the Vatican.

ENVOI
Let us now praise famous Popes
Lords of all creation,
Stern opponents of safe sex
And of fornication.

So we'll sing a Papal Mass,
Start with a Te Deum,
Don't omit the Sanctus, lads:
Hoc est corpus meum.

© Janice Farquharson, SLC (Staunch Lapsed Catholic)
18/4 - 30/6/05.