Francis. Pope Francis. Oh, isn't Pope Francis just great? I hear he rides the bus, like a hobo or a child! And he cares about poor people! What a decent fellow! Let's all gather around and celebrate Pope Francis! Tra-la-la!
I understand that you Americans call it sour grapes. Well, these two grapes of mine are sour. They are very sour indeed. The whole world was begging for Cardinal Peter Turkson to be pope. "Let the black guy be the pope," Americans were crying. "The Catholic Church needs its own Obama," Italians were chanting in the streets of Vatican City. I also understand that you Americans warn about taking account of your eggs before they hatch into adorable little baby chicks, and we have a similar term in Ghana involving goats and shame. But I still had a name all picked out for my selection: Pope Dionysius II, after the pope who rebuilt the church from Goth attacks and brokered a peace with Emperor Gallienus. Could there be a more appropriate name for a pope during a time when the church is under assault from people angry about the purity of their precious children rather than the state of their immortal souls, and when homosexuality is invading every corner of the globe, as the Goths before them?
Everything seemed to be falling into place, and then... well, you know. Francis. Francis the bus-rider. Francis the poor-lover. Francis the beloved. Let me tell you something: When the man in the job before you was a Nazi at one time in his life, you do not have to try very hard to be beloved. I would have been just as beloved as Francis the Jesuit. More, even, for I would have been the Catholic Church's Obama, only instead of being born in Kenya, I am from Ghana, which makes me clearly superior in every way to those mother-loving Kenyans.
But that was not God's will, apparently. And now I see that even this apostate homosexualist pamphlet has published a glowing profile of Our Beloved Francis. The author—a woman!—tut-tuts at Francis for declaring the homosexuals to be Satan's work, just as you'd expect, but the remainder of the article consists of the same adoration that every paper has tossed Francis's way, and it is unbearable. Where is the anti-Catholic slander we have all come to expect? Look at what surrounds this article—praise of a mural that glorifies whores, a new column written in a state of drunkenness, an interview with two youths about their pro-literacy festival—and you see why I am so surprised that even Hell's house organ has so many kind words for Francis. Does Francis, after all, work miracles with his dirty hands that stink from holding the phlegm-coated rails on city buses? How I hate that man. Lord forgive me, but I pray that he will be playing canasta soon enough with the Nazi at the Old Popes' Home. The Catholic Obama will have his day in the sun, and then all you homosexuals had better sing my praises, too.
