Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Learning To Cope With A Dead Funky Pope
Vatican City. Pope John Paul II has now joined the ranks of hundreds of other dead popes who have been dead longer than six days. The difference between Pope John Paul II and the hundreds of thousands of other popes who have been dead longer than six days is that this pope is still above ground, getting around and performing his pope-ly duties just fine with a little help from his friends. Though most cardinals wearing red coats and pointy hats only weigh approximately nine ounces and spend most of their time perched in twigs and branches, it is these same hardy little fellows who have been hauling the pope around on a large pope-slab for days on end. After the tenth or twelfth day of hauling the pope around, they will remove the pontiffs glitzy vestments, his spiffy duds, his sweet ass staff and the emergency spliff the pontiff always kept hidden in his personal frankincense burner. Tu Placer Tu Weedum Internum Thereum, the pope always used to say or translated from the Latin, “you put your weed in there.”
These items were designed by famous Italian clothiers four centuries ago, and are considered priceless. They are recycled at the end of each popehood, and given to the next pope, whose electability rests at least in part on his indiscriminating sense of smell. The pope’s vestments were specially designed to resist wine stains, cigarette smoke, and the body odor emanating from a dead pope long before mortuary science had devised modern embalming techniques. Nevertheless, ten days of even the best preserved pope seemed to be stretching the limits of what the special vestments and the pope’s successor are prepared to tolerate.
This reporter phoned the Vatican to see how they were handling the situation and was referred to Cardinal Tortellini, special representative of the Dead Pontiffs Society, a unique, secretive holy order within the Roman Catholic Church which sees to all aspects of the care and needs of deceased Holy Sees as well as the screening of films dedicated to uplifting the hearts and minds of us all by illuminating us through the story of oppressed private school children who need to be educated by Robin Williams that literature can teach us to better appreciate life’s blessings and liberate our spirits to transcend our authoritarian, dogmatic social environments. Or stuff like that, you see.
The R.A.G. Files: Your Eminence, how did you get into the Dead Pontiffs Society?
Cardinal Tortillini: I’ve always been interested in the problems of dead popes ever since I was a kid. Especially the odor issue. I used to sew together miniature vestments and put them on road kill I found, just to, you know, see what would happen.
RAG: And what did happen?
Torti: Well my experiments always failed. I tried to freeze them, but I didn’t realize at the time that a dead pope has to be ambulatory. A frozen dead pope just is not going to meet the needs of grieving people. We can’t really do too much with a popescicle, can we? [laughs maniacally]
RAG: I wouldn’t know, Your Eminence. Is there any kind of Vatican protocol or canon laws on what can and can’t be done with a popescicle?
Torti: No.
RAG: Moving on, what exactly do your job duties consist of?
Torti: Great question. Nuts n’ bolts. I like that very much. Sure. Once the pope is good and nasty, we have to take his vestments off and clean off the dead pope goobers for the new live pope. Its that simple. I can go into exactly details about the process which we have a special dead pope vestment cleaner formula which would cease to be profitable if every layperson knew what was in it. I will tell to this: ten days of being dead makes most people bloat, popes included. Sometimes the vestments are so tight we have to cut them off. We have to be very careful not to puncture the skin because of the potential gasses—
RAG: —Thank you very much for your time Your Eminence, it seems you have too much of it, if you’ll pardon a little sarcasm.
Torti: My pleasure.
These items were designed by famous Italian clothiers four centuries ago, and are considered priceless. They are recycled at the end of each popehood, and given to the next pope, whose electability rests at least in part on his indiscriminating sense of smell. The pope’s vestments were specially designed to resist wine stains, cigarette smoke, and the body odor emanating from a dead pope long before mortuary science had devised modern embalming techniques. Nevertheless, ten days of even the best preserved pope seemed to be stretching the limits of what the special vestments and the pope’s successor are prepared to tolerate.
This reporter phoned the Vatican to see how they were handling the situation and was referred to Cardinal Tortellini, special representative of the Dead Pontiffs Society, a unique, secretive holy order within the Roman Catholic Church which sees to all aspects of the care and needs of deceased Holy Sees as well as the screening of films dedicated to uplifting the hearts and minds of us all by illuminating us through the story of oppressed private school children who need to be educated by Robin Williams that literature can teach us to better appreciate life’s blessings and liberate our spirits to transcend our authoritarian, dogmatic social environments. Or stuff like that, you see.
The R.A.G. Files: Your Eminence, how did you get into the Dead Pontiffs Society?
Cardinal Tortillini: I’ve always been interested in the problems of dead popes ever since I was a kid. Especially the odor issue. I used to sew together miniature vestments and put them on road kill I found, just to, you know, see what would happen.
RAG: And what did happen?
Torti: Well my experiments always failed. I tried to freeze them, but I didn’t realize at the time that a dead pope has to be ambulatory. A frozen dead pope just is not going to meet the needs of grieving people. We can’t really do too much with a popescicle, can we? [laughs maniacally]
RAG: I wouldn’t know, Your Eminence. Is there any kind of Vatican protocol or canon laws on what can and can’t be done with a popescicle?
Torti: No.
RAG: Moving on, what exactly do your job duties consist of?
Torti: Great question. Nuts n’ bolts. I like that very much. Sure. Once the pope is good and nasty, we have to take his vestments off and clean off the dead pope goobers for the new live pope. Its that simple. I can go into exactly details about the process which we have a special dead pope vestment cleaner formula which would cease to be profitable if every layperson knew what was in it. I will tell to this: ten days of being dead makes most people bloat, popes included. Sometimes the vestments are so tight we have to cut them off. We have to be very careful not to puncture the skin because of the potential gasses—
RAG: —Thank you very much for your time Your Eminence, it seems you have too much of it, if you’ll pardon a little sarcasm.
Torti: My pleasure.
