BREAKING: Devil And Pope Share Taste In Shoes

We've regaled you many times before with tales from our days as denizens of the religioeducorporate enterprise known to non-initiates as "Catholic School." And, as a result we've argued in our entertaining, if somewhat logically challenged way that these traumas...er...experiences gave us a fair degree of credibility to comment on matters theological.

Or we could just be making the whole thing up. (Folks, read the blog's title, OK? We're busy here.)

But back to the pope. Once again we feel it is our duty to help the non-genuflecting, Latinless population (Ita, te adloquor) understand that when the pope says something totally insensitive, vaguely racist and definitely unchristian, well, he's the pope. You want to make something of it? Like a little holy ghost action up in your grill?

Er...what we mean is he's been misunderstood, quoted out of context, or purposely misinterpreted by anti-catholic subversives. Or people who can read, whatever. Anyway, on to the holy father's latest bite out of his red Pradas:

Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said they were offended by pope Benedict's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments that the roman catholic church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step. "Oh yeah. This from a guy who runs around wearing the drapes with a basket on his head," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab. "Hey popey, who's your tailor? Omar the tent maker?"

The pope said the church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said. "Sure they didn't even know Christianity existed until we got here, but that's why the longing was silent."

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the church through slaughter, disease or enslavement. "Want to make an omelet, got to break some eggs," said a vatican spokesperson. "They're better off today."

Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society. "OK, I'm going to have to get back to you on the better off thing," the spokesperson said.

"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Mawe.

"Not when my culture is about to get all righteous on your jungle living, goat eating, tree worshiping behind," countered a spokesperson for the pope's office of catholic hegemony.

Several Indian groups sent a letter to the pope last week asking for his support in defending their ancestral lands and culture. "They have land?" asked an official from the vatican bank. "We may have to rethink this."

"The state used the church to do the dirty work in colonizing the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that ... so is the pope taking back the church's word?" said Dionito Jose de Souza a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state.

"Hey, these people eat bark for chrissakes," said the pope's press secretary. "What are we supposed to do? Now take the Indians in America. If we could apologize ourselves into some of that casino money, that's some big time mea culpa, know what I'm saying?"

Pope Benedict not only upset many Indians but also catholic priests who have joined their struggle, said Sandro Tuxa, who heads the movement of northeastern tribes. "I work for idiots, what can I say?" Tuxa told reporters. "I feel like Dilbert."

Even the catholic church's own Indian advocacy group in Brazil, known as Cimi, distanced itself from the pope. "The pope doesn't understand the reality of the Indians here," Cimi advisor Father Paulo Suess told reporters. "Of course we're talking about a guy who thinks women are only good for making more catholics; homosexuals are bad unless they're priests; and listening to rock music will make you protestant, so understanding reality probably isn't too high on his list of things to do."