New Pope Elected!

Well, as everybody knows by now, the conclave of Catholic cardinals have elected their new Pope. Pope Francis the First is the first Jesuit Pope and the first Pope in over a thousand years to have not been from a European country.
     When I broke the news to President Obama, he was quick to jump to the wrong conclusion.
     "I'm truly honored," he humbly told me, "but nobody deserves it more than I do. I deserve it the way I deserved my Nobel Peace Prize and Time Magazine's Man of the Year award."
     It broke my heart to tell the man who once saved my life in 'Nam that it was an Italian--an Italian by way of Latin America, that is--who was actually elected to the highest office in the Catholic Church. The President was quick to shrug it off. I know he was disappointed, but life goes on. He had Republicans to ignore, after all.
     Personally, I think the President would have made a wonderful Pope. True, he's not Catholic and doesn't believe in God, but what does that have to do with anything?
     I know very little about the new Pope. I know that he's seventy-six years-old. So, even though the cardinals may be trusting him with the Church, they won't be trusting him with the keys to the Pope-mobile any time soon.
     I also know that he has only one lung. One lung? Yes, I said he only has one lung. I heard he lost it on a Prom date gone horribly wrong.
     Old. Frail. One lung. What were the cardinals thinking? I guess in the next papal election, they'll elect a man who's already dead.
     These are turbulent times for the Catholic Church, and, like a midget using a urinal, the new Pope will have to stay on his toes, but Pope Francis doesn't come without his own share of baggage and controversy, as he...

 

...the rest of this column has been cancelled due to threats from the Mafia...

 

American Chimpanzee

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