A crate for fruit

Update: If anyone thinks this is a gratuitous slur on the Pontifex and his sexual preferences and doesn't speak Italian, the slur is actually worse than they may have thought. The name of the wholesale fruit and veg dealers on the side of the plastic crate in the top picture is PAPA & L'AMANTE (which, translated into English, reads POPE AND LOVER). Papa is a fairly common name in these parts, L'Amante rather less so; the combination was too good to miss.

Ave fellow thugs

The back in the middle of this picture belongs to someone called Don Giulio Tam. He defines himself as an 'itinerant Jesuit' but he's actually one of the gang of break-away catholic traditionalists, headed by Lefebvre and recently re-admitted to the fold by Ratzinger. He looks as though he's calling for order or maybe directing traffic in this picture, but what he's actually doing is making a Roman salute, the kind Mussolini made fashionable all those years ago, to a group of right-wing extremists (sorry, Forza Nuova) in Bergamo. What with Archbishop Robinson et al, it looks as though, for the Vatican, blackshirts are the new black. 

These must be prayer sticks.

One picture...

Aiming at foot, hitting foot

I've heard people say that the Westboro Baptist Church, by revealing the true face of fundamentalist homophobia, is the best thing to happen to the fight for gay equality in years. I suppose this is true in the same way that summary executions of teenage gays in Iran or the anathema of Mugabe and the president of the Gambia, whose name I have no intention of committing to memory, are 'useful' reminders of the lengths to which instutionalised homophobia can go. By this token, Ratzinger's decision to welcome back to the catholic fold a gang of befrocked negationists, otherwise known as the schismatic followers of French archbishop Lefebvre, can also be seen as a good thing as it strips away yet one more layer of whatever moral authority the man, and the organisation he represents, is supposed to possess, though it must be rather hard on those catholics who belong to the church because they believe in the message of Christ. The next thing you know he'll be recognising the authenticity of the Protocols of Zion. Why shouldn't he? Holocaust-denier archbishop Robert Williamson already does. 

Hohum

Gaia

Ratzinger's festive message was unusually spirited this year. It's good to know that old age and too many tennis lessons with the lovely Georg haven't robbed the old trooper of his sense of humour. In a costume that Widow Twanky would have murdered for - and one can only imagine the sumptuousness of the under-garments - Eggs tried out a new routine to the joy of the usual fanbase of lick-spittles and Italian politicians worshipping catholics. Well, not exactly new, more a reworking of old material, but hey! a girl can't go on dancing all the time. The new wheeze is that the world's ecology is damaged less by deforestation than it is by pussy-bumping and its male equivalent. (I'd use Madame Arcati's more colourful terms for this but my mother's only feet away from me as I write.) According to the mad old slapper, gay sex is the equivalent of wiping out whole tracts of the Amazon. What he hasn't provided us with, alas, is a conversion table. For example, just how much damage does one act of consensual anal sex do in carbon footprint terms? Come on, Ratzy, we need to know. I mean, if it can be proven that a quick blow job is no more destructive than, say, uprooting a small fruit-bearing bush, at least we know where we stand. We can make a reasoned decision. Maybe we can offset the carbon cost of a weekend on Ibiza, or Lesbos, by planting a hedge of privet and growing some rhubarb. You must have people who know these things, Ratzy. You seem to be surrounded by experts on just about everything, from medicine for the terminally ill, indeed totally vegetative, to the price of bloody fish.

Money

Well, it's good to be reminded once again who really runs Italy. When it emerged that the Treasury was planning to reduce the amount of funding provided by the Italian state to catholic schools, it took no more than a few hours for a papal hissy fit to change their minds. According to Ratzy, the church's right to our money is 'inalienable'. Well, I'd have preferred the word 'indefensible', but there you go. You don't argue with the boss.

(Seen here, preparing a primal gift for Christmas.)

Stop press: Luxuria wins IdF

Well, it's not Obama, but I'm happy to report that Italy's most famous transgender politician-cum-actor-cum-a-host-of-other-things, Vladimir Luxuria, has just won the Italian version of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, known here as Isola dei Famosi (Island of the Famous). It's less creepy-crawly than the UK version, but lasts ten weeks instead of three, requiring massive patience from both its public and the participants. Vladimir's victory over a strikingly attractive 24-year-old Argentinian called Belen Rodriguez, who may be famous now but certainly wasn't when the programme started almost three months ago, is a sign that in Italy, unlike many other countries, the people are way ahead of the politicians that represent them. Voting for Martina Navratilova or even Brian Paddick is one thing. Voting for a pre-op transsexual who's admitted to a period on the game, transformed a coconut shell into a makeshift handbag and represented Communist Refoundation in parliament is, I think you'll agree, another. 

Over to you, Ratzinger.

A froggie would a sacking go

The curator of the exhibition in Bolzano that included this admittedly rather unlovely artwork, by Martin Kippenberger, has just had her contract withdrawn. Corinne Diserens, appointed director of the new Museion to give it a touch of international class and responsible for the presence of the crucified amphibian, has already been excommunicated by the local archbishop, as well as being on the receiving end of protests, hunger strikes, complaints to the authorities and a letter from 'Eggs' Benedict himself. Given that the exhibition, entitled Peripheral Vision and Collective Body (it sounds better in Italian, just) ended in September, Diserens, currently gathering material in China for her next show at the Museion, must have been surprised to be told yesterday that her services are no longer needed. There's surely no connection between her summary dismissal and the fact that the Volkspartei, which had an absolute majority in the province until last week, did rather badly in the local elections. Maybe they should ask for the crucifix back and see if they can attach a scapegoat to it.

Croatia. The Mediterranean as it once was?

Thinking of going to Croatia on holiday? Read this piece by Diamond Walid and see if you fit into the rather narrow range of sexual and racial acceptability demanded by Croatian youths on the lookout for victims (you know, the kind that 'ask for it'). If you do, think about whether you want to have a holiday in a place where the range matters.  If you don't, think twice.

Croatia is 90% catholic. Nice one, Ratzy.

Jam and jewels

The EU is looking into why religious education teachers in Italian schools receive preferential treatment: less rigorous selection (they're handpicked by the local bishop) and better salaries. Not that they do teach religion, any more than a geography teacher who just does, say, rivers actually teaches geography. They teach catholicism. And not teach as in "opening minds". Teach as in "indoctrinate".

This is the second EU investigation into the way the catholic church gets kid-gloved in Italy. The other one, set up a couple of years ago, is looking into the tax breaks given to church-run hotels, schools, massage parlours (well, maybe not massage parlours), quite apart from the inordinately large slab of money it receives from Italian tax payers in the first place. Ratzinger was drivelling on about what a terrible thing money was yesterday, to a bunch of old men dripping gold and velvet, clapping their bejewelled paws, stamping their Prada'd feet. So why not give some back, Eggs? Instead of putting political pressure on the EU, via its parliamentary goons in Italy, to persuade it to leave the Vatican's coffers alone?

Gagging order

If you'd like to know more about the absurd case of satirist Sabina Guzzanti being prosecuted for "contempt of the pope" and, more generally, the state of freedom of speech in an increasingly myopic Italy, there's a very useful article in today's Guardian online. You can read it here.

Dear Editor

I thought I'd write to La Repubblica to point out that the rest of the world (pace the horrified wailing of the Italian media) is actually not that interested in Ratzinger's failure to show at la Sapienza. On the assumption that it won't be appearing in tomorrow's edition, this is what I wrote:

Contrariamente a quanto detto da quasi tutti i giornali e telegiornali italiani, la rinuncia del papa di presentarsi all'inaugurazione del anno accademico della Sapienza ha avuto pochissimo risalto nei media internazionali, almeno quelli di lingua inglese. L'assenza del papa, per motivi squisitamente politici, e lo scompiglio creato all’interno del mondo politico sono affari che riguardano il Vaticano e il governo italiano e poco altro. Meglio così? O l'amore proprio nazionale vuole che anche i piccoli disaccordi di famiglia attirino gli occhi del mondo intero?
(Contrary to what has been said by practically every Italian newspaper and programme, very little attention has been given by the foreign press to the pope's decision not to appear at the inauguration of the academic year of the Sapienza. The pope's absence, for purely political reasons, and the upset this has caused in political circles interest the Vatican and the Italian government and practically no one else. This is no bad thing. Unless, of course, Italian amour propre would prefer every family tiff to draw the attention of the entire world?)

If it isn't published, I will, of course, claim to have been censored. Even better, I might just withdraw the letter first and then claim to have been censored!

Papal bull part two

Well, would you believe it? Ratzinger's decided that his presence at La Sapienza would be 'inopportune'. It's hardly the first time his cowardice desire to avoid conflict has overruled his spiritual, and political, responsibilities. Less than a month ago, he chose not to receive the Dalai Lama for reasons that had very little to do with religious divergence and everything to do with Realpolitik. Who can blame him? It's what you'd expect from the leader of a tinpot state the size of a football field. Still, since when has 'inopportune' been part of the papal lexicon? If Jesus had been more 'opportune', just think, he might have avoided the cross and ended up dressed in gem-encrusted frocks and leopard-skin pillbox hats - or something very similar - like his most recent representative. He might have been able to issue diktats on just about everything from stem cell research to civic administration. He might have, but he wasn't. Never mind. The new man doesn't do self-sacrifice, or risk, or exposure to conflict, or open discussion. He's an expert, after all. He's the pope of fucking everything.

Oh yes. Italian state television devoted over half (16 minutes!) of its news programme (TG1) to this story. As if that weren't enough, it twisted the facts to suggest that the pope had in some way been prevented from appearing at the event. He chose not to come. Repeat. He chose not to come. How many times does this need saying? He chose not to come.

More papal bull

It's Ratzinger's week. Not content with assuming the position (see below), he's stirred up a hornet's nest at La Sapienza, Rome and Italy's largest university. Invited to the inauguration of the academic year (which, typically, takes place months after it's actually begun) by Rector Guarini, himself currently under investigation for corruption and no doubt eager for a little pontifical indulgence, B16 is going to have to deal with demonstrations and all kinds. Why? Initially, because a group of physics professors pointed out in a letter to la Repubblica that, according to Ratzinger, the church did the right thing with Galileo, which would tend to exclude him from the cradle of rationality and scientific progress that a secular seat of learning such as a state university represents, in theory at least. Since the letter was published, a lot of other people in the university have expressed similar doubts about the need to invite the obscurantist leader of a non-democratic foreign state to its opening day. More power to their elbow, say I.

Naturally, there are those who defend his presence, insisting that not to invite him would be tantamout to censorship. How many times must it be said that censorship means preventing someone from communicating his or her ideas in an absolute sense? It isn't censorhip if the Daily Mail chooses not to host the writing of Noam Chomsky. It isn't censorship if the Vatican chooses not to invite Vladimir Luzuria to its Christmas shindig. It's common sense, editorial policy, institutional policy, whatever. It's perfectly licit to prefer not to invite a man whose opnions run counter to everything a university should stand for. In any case, the word of Ratzinger hardly goes unheard. The man's a total media tart, rarely off the TV screen or out of the press, his every querulous fart apparently worthy of national attention.

The amusing thing is that his defenders refer to him as an academic. Of what? Theology? Next year I imagine they'll be inviting an astrologer or someone who can read the entrails of slaughtered goats on the grounds that these are also rigorous academic disciplines. And talking of cultural pluralism and open-mindedness, which is what Ratzinger's critics are accused of lacking (hah!), it's interesting to see that one of Rome's most historic art cimemas, il Labirinto, is being forced to close because the proprietors of the building want to replace it with something more profitable. And who are the proprietors? That's right. The Vatican.

Assuming the position

Eggs Benedict celebrated mass yesterday with his back turned to the congregation, something that hasn't been done since the Second Vatican Council. It might not be that user-friendly in the traditional catholic sense, but hey! it can't be the first time he's been bent over a table with his public behind him.

Mnemonics

I've noticed that many of my labels (the little words at the bottom of each post - I know you knew, but still...) have only been used once. This seems a very uneconomical practice, so I thought I'd try to boost the numbers of a few by reviving a mnemonics exercise I was taught many years ago. It goes like this. If you want to remember something you should associate it with something else in as kinetic, colourful and, if possible, obscene a way as possible.

Now I'm not going to do this for you. I'm simply going to give you the pairs of words and let you do the associating. Here goes (and I'll start with an easy one):

Borghezio - buttplug
Larry Craig - body snatchers
bars - pottery
circumcision - Paris Hilton
Ratzinger - very dark cave
fatwa - eucharist
heritage - dementia
Rupert Everett - soap

I'll be testing you in the weeks to come. Don't let me down.

Pontifical knickers twisted

Editorialist for La Repubblica and one of Italy's sharpest journalists, Curzio Maltese, has been looking at the way Italian taxpayers contribute, largely without their direct consent, to the Vatican's bulging coffers. The money collected by the catholic church each year through the legalised scam known as otto per mille* amounts to an extraordinary €80 billion. Of this, just over a third comes from taxpayers who specifically choose to direct part of their money to the Vatican; the rest of it - €524,565,000,000 in 2004 - is skimmed off the taxes of those who express no preference.

It would be nice to think that all this free money is spent on good works. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. The 2005 campaign (created by Saatchi and Saatchi, friends to the wise and good) showed images of the tsunami and its devastating effects. The price of the campaign? Nine million euros. The amount of aid provided by the Vatican to tsunami victims? Three million euros. In percentage terms, the Union of Jewish Communities gave twenty terms as much, despite the fact that there are no Jewish communities in the areas affected. The amount of otto per mille money actually spent on charitable works by the catholic church amounts to no more than 20% of the total. The rest of it goes on, well, other things. I'll leave you to decide what these might be, but they certainly aren't priests' wages: these have halved since 1999; the amount of tax money the church has received in these years has quintupled.

Livia Turco, ex-minister for solidarity, once suggested that the otto per mille money assigned by taxpayers to the state (around 8% of the total) be used directly to combat infant poverty, imagining the Holy See would be only to keen to back her. She couldn't have been more wrong. The Vatican peevishly accused the state of 'unfair competition' and the idea was dropped. Infant poverty is clearly Vatican business. Under Berlusconi, the state's portion was used to finance the war in Iraq and, get this, the restoration of churches. Catholic churches, naturally.

The response to Maltese's articles was immediate. Vatican house organ Avvenire called them 'one of the most colossal operations of disinformation of recent times' - unlike, presumably, the Vatican's tsunami campaign - and, for good measure, 'indecent': a common ploy when anyone dares to criticise the church, as though decency were a spiritual rather than social value. Unlike his papal predecessors, who let their underlings do the dirty work, Eggs Benedict threw one of his usual hissy fits, insisting that the catholic church doesn't ask for or expect financial favours. I'm sorry? Say that again? Even the EU begs to differ.

*Otto per mille. Italian tax payers can devolve 0.8% of the tax they pay to a religious body of their choice, or to the state. Most of the people who bother (40.86% of taxpayers) devolve it to the Vatican. The percentage of tax that isn’t assigned to anyone is divided up in the same proportions as that which is, although some churches - such as the Waldensians - refuse it. The Vatican, in other words, gets a substantial slice of revenue from people who don’t want to give it to the catholic church.

The price of Eggs

I got it wrong in my earlier post. Eggs Benedict's jaunt with Georg in the Dolomites - because clearly his lakeside retreat at Castel Gandolfo just isn't sufficiently close to God - isn't costing the Italian government €40,000 at all. It's costing the Veneto region something like €345,000.

Sorry.

The Emperor's Old/New Clothes

From today's Independent, by Peter Popham:

The magnificent papal wardrobe has been steadily modified since Vatican II. Pope Paul VI symbolically laid his splendid tiara on the altar of St Peter's at the end of the council; it was sold and the proceeds donated to charity. Benedict has yet to buy it back, but he has repeatedly stunned Vaticanologists with the variety of archaic hats, capes and other adornments he chooses to sport. In his first winter as Pope he donned the snug, Santa Claus-like "camauro" hat, red velvet with a border of white ermine (see right), which had not been worn since John XXIII, who died in 1963. He also affected the "galero", a cowboy-like number in red, and the "greca", the ankle-length cashmere overcoat last worn by Pope Pius XII. He has also moved to restore some of the dignity of the Pope sacrificed by his predecessors in the interests of humility and conciliation. Benedict has been photographed seated in the little-used golden throne in the Vatican's Sala Paolina, where Pius XII used to receive important visitors on their knees.

I wonder what he's wearing on his holidays, devoted to walking, the thinking of deep religious thoughts and the gathering of woodland fruit, according to an ever-fawning Italian press. Something light and cool, I suppose, silk camiknickers, perhaps, last honoured by a papal arse three centuries ago; as flimsy as the vain old slapper's moral authority.

Nobody's bothered to tell us whether the lovely Georg is a-nutting and a-berrying with him.

(Update: On tonight's TV news, Georg was three paces behind as Eggs walked, and thought, and walked, in his simple monastic way, surrounded by other befrocked old men and, obviously, security. Security which is costing the Italian government over €40,000. Enjoy the break, Eggs! We'll pay for the omelette.)