"The Pope spoke at a synagogue in Berlin that was destroyed by the Nazis and apologized for the destruction. Then he politely wondered if, by any chance, during the rebuilding, anyone had found his wallet".That one was US comedian Bill Maher's. He got in hot water for it.
But not as hot as Italian comic Sabina Guzzanti, who is now threatened with a five-year stretch in chokey for cracking jokes about ex-Cardinal Ratzinger.
In Italy, insulting the Pope – and indeed contempt for the president – is an offence punishable by one to five years in jail.
Guzzanti's crime was to remark (with reference to the Catholic church's attitude to homosexuality) that "in 20 years Ratzinger will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons - not passive ones, but very active ones."
The nature of this wisecrack is ironic, given that another low-level furore about Pope jokes, back in 2006, related to rumours that Benedict XVI might himself be homosexual. Those cracks came at the expense of his good-looking right-hand man, Monsignor Georg Ganswein – pointedly called "Gay-org" by the Vatican gossip-mongers.
As a Time magazine blogger wrote at the time, "when you're a Pope who declares that even closeted, chaste gay men cannot be priests, it's pushing your luck to clothe yourself in Prada, bedeck your Pope-mobile with luxurious Natuzzi Italian white leather, and surround yourself with assistants who look like they strayed from the pages of L'Uomo Vogue."
If it were up to Italian prosecutors, that blogger would be breaking rocks as we speak. To the rest of us, it isn't so much an offence to joke about the Pope (or about Silvio Berlusconi; or about, say, the Ayatollahs) as a moral imperative.
Any powerful institution that decrees it must not be laughed at (as per the Vatican's 1929 treaty declaring the Pope "sacred and inviolable") should henceforward be exposed to relentless derision.
That's how tyrannies are kept in check.
Fortunately, most such institutions make it easy for us. Anti-Bush humour was verboten in the States for a while – remember all those schoolchildren expelled for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts? – but there's only so long you can discuss Dubya with a straight face.
Likewise the Pope.
How can you not laugh at a Hitler Youth veteran in a frock earnestly redefining never-never-land?
Telling jokes about that isn't a crime, it's the only sane response.
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(Source: Guardian.co.uk)