Grinding Slow

Upright members of the Congregation for the Perpetuation of Sex Abuse, known to its friends and dupes as the Universal Church of Rome, will be pleased to see that the centenary of Pope John Paul II's birth is being celebrated with astronomical vindictiveness in his native land. A graven image newly erected in Warsaw shows the delightful old paedophile-protector rampant with meteorite above a puddle of blood; this apparently represents the pious artist's devastating rebuttal, now that he's had time to mull it over, of an Italian sculpture which appeared in Venice a mere twenty-one years ago. The Venice piece was blasphemously titled La nona ora ("The Ninth Hour"), after the time of day at which the crucified Jesus finally understood His Father's sense of humour, and depicted the then-unsainted Pontiff crushed by a meteorite. The idea that God would ever stone an anti-communist to death for no better reason than condoning rape and child abuse is, of course, almost as tasteless as it is absurd.