The Pope must be wearing ratty, ragged underwear under those silk robes; all the fancy gold statues in the Vatican must be gilt over rotting wood; the famous paintings are all cheap reproductions. The place must be on the verge of economic collapse. At least, that’s what I assume must be the case, since the UK government paid for the Pope’s visit out of Department for International Development funds, a part of the budget that is normally earmarked for aid to “war-torn or fragile states” as part of a commitment to fight global poverty.

So the Vatican must be sort of like Somalia. I had no idea they were in such a dire state.

I’m a middle-class kind of guy who is doing all right economically right now. But I think next time I visit Minneapolis I’m going to get my gas money by beating up some homeless folk, and then I’m going to eat by crashing a soup kitchen…oh, and I’m bigger than those scrawny half-starved old codgers, so I’m going to demand double helpings of everything. Don’t think badly of me, I’ll just be trying to live up to the Catholic ideal.