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Dimwits

I told these buggers, ‘if you must do it, do it on the quiet’, I said. But do they have that sort of sense? If they did, they wouldn’t be giving inadequate sermons in ruined parish churches for years – they’d be the Pope, like me. I had to pontificate so much to hush it all up: about Iraq, about the civil war in Sudan, about the seminary in Turkey, about Muslim terrorists. But it seems a bunch of journalists have it in for me. Faggots. So what if my men have groped a couple of children? Doesn’t this ever happen in Islamic orders? They say I’ve sheltered paedophiliac clerics! They say I hushed up criminal records during my tenure as a cardinal with the admonition: ‘Always keep under lock and key. Top secret.’ They grope their pupils at schools, their patients in their clinics, and their own children in their homes to their hearts’ content, and then clamour at me to clear their consciences. Everyone envies the Vatican. They envy our power just as they envy our gold-embroidered clothes and our spectacular sceptre.