A reader asked me for my response to 'Gaudate et Insultate', I've read some excellent analyses of the document and I don't think I can add much to it, so I thought I might as well sing what we can see is going on, what others have noted, based on The Dentist Song, from the hit musical Little Shop of Horrors. That song's about a brutal, sadistic dentist. Not like our Pope, obviously. He isn't a dentist.

The Franciscan pontificate is unpredictable and volatile, as well as risible. From day to day it scandalises and shocks the Church.

The next Pope will have to learn from the many serious mistakes made during this pontificate and should already, while a Cardinal, be examining where Francis has gone wrong, as well as the partial success (if you can call it that) of his extraordinary public relations efforts, efforts which have now led to the most amazing apology in all of human history, the kind of stupendous apology that marks a Pope who called abuse victims liars and slanderers out as a living Saint. Really, he should be canonised now. But, here's what I'll be looking for from the next Pope, should God in His mercy give one to the Church.

1. I hope that the next Pope believes in the Catholic Faith. It's a big one this and I think that the Catholic Church in the next pontificate requires someone who believes the religion into which they were baptised. It really helps people…

A link was shared recently to Haaretz documenting the anti-semitic remarks of Cardinal Maradiaga concerning the 'Jewish media' and the 'whipping up' of the abuse crisis in the Church from early 2013. A little while before ++ Maradiaga's 'it was the Jews' diversion, I recall Cardinal Sodano suggesting, publicly, to Pope Benedict XVI that the abuse crisis was a kind of manufactured phenomenom attended by the 'feigned' outrage of media. I think he had intended these words to be a form of consolation to the then Pope(after all we know what a loyal a creature ++ Sodano is) but one could tell from Benedict XVI's face what he thought of ++Sodano's words: 'You're not helping.'Such were the kind of men hovering around Benedict XVI. I think Cardinal Bertone (what is he up to nowadays?) called the Vatican a nest of 'crows and vipers', or something such like.


Many of us,at that time, had no idea what kind of persons were such individu…

“They’re not punished. Those who repent obtain forgiveness and enter the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who don’t repent and can’t be forgiven disappear. A Hell doesn’t exist, what exists is the disappearance of sinning souls.”
Well, obviously (cough), there's no way (Hosea!) the Pope said this. Indeed, given that Eugene Scalfari is so 'creative' with the truth and apparently just makes up his own mind what the Pope has said from memory having interviewed him, why should we even believe that this interview even took place. If Scalfari isn't a trustworthy reporter of people's quotations, should we even believe the story that this interview happened?

The comings and goings of Vatican communications and denials whenever the Pope gives a controversial interview to Scalfari aside, and putting aside also whether the Pope said it (personally, I don't take anythingFrancis says seriouslynow, anyway) its worth examining what he 'probably / possibly…

The above video is the latest footage that has arrived during the  Revolution of Tenderness TM. 
If you can't see the moment of heartmelting tenderness in this video it begins at 1min 45sec in the video below and is over very quickly.







It must be a huge honour to get slapped about and shoved 
around a bit by the Great Reformer.

Feel the mercy!



Some people have received the highest honour the Church can accord, that of being mown down by the Pope's vehicle.



Pray for Henry Sire, author of 'The Dictator Pope'.



Pray for his protection and the protection of all those who are determined to stand in the way of the juggernaut of FrancisMercy.

Until Easter Day, I wish you a blessed Holy Week. 


Lord, have mercy!
 Dear Lord, deliver us!

As readers know, I do not, unlike many mainstream Catholic commentators, hello Austen Ivereigh, go along with the idea that the Pope can simply change stuff he doesn't much like, such as God's truth on morality and I do not accept for one moment that what was wrong yesterday is made morally acceptable / fine and dandy today simply by the Pope's awesome openness or even firm 'Yes' to sin.

It is becoming farcically difficult to pretend that this is not what Pope Francis's agenda involves for the Church and so for this reason I daily pray for the conversion of Pope Francisto the Faith into which he was baptised which hegives every impression that he has rejected in favour of what we could call 'his own thing'. I am certain that many, many people are praying for precisely the same outcome because Catholics do not want Popes to meet their Maker without them believing the Faith without which their investment in the sublime Office of the Papacy is rendered co…