THE cardinals will meet in Rome in the middle of
next month for the papal election. It usually takes a few days, what
with the usual canvassing and horse-trading.It's no different to your average county council election: "Can you get a new roof for my basilica? And is there any chance you could fill in that pothole outside the convent before one of the smaller nuns falls in and gets drowned? And where's the 'Father Ted' box set you promised me?'
It's well within the bounds of possibility that the new pope will be elected on St Patrick's Day. Maybe we might even have an Irish pope on the day that's in it.
Pope Patrick might be the new man's name.
The cardinals might even elect an Irish woman like, say, Mary McAleese who's a theologian and was the most popular head of state in the world when she was our President.
But in this time of election fever, we can exclusively report there will not be a woman pope.
Under no circumstances. Whatsoever.
A source close to the Vatican revealed as much in an exclusive interview.
The source is a cardinal, and a Vatican insider of long standing. We go back a long way. Back to the time when I was a spud peeler in his nephew's chipper in a town near the sea. The cardinal was frank.
"Sure, how could you put up with a woman pope?" he scoffed. "There you'd be lying down on a sofa that was once owned by Michelangelo and in comes Il Papa with: "What are you doing stretched out there watching Serie A when there's work to be done?"
Then His Excellency lets out a little shriek, like he was goosed. It seems His Munificence was standing on a ventilation grid and a blast of sibilant hot air blew up his cassock. Some Like it Hot.
I suggest Alex Ferguson for pope. The Manchester United manager is not a Catholic, but he can switch over in a free transfer. All it takes is a bucket of water for the baptism. And no one knows the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism anyway.
The cardinal disagrees. "Yes, Sir Alex has the leadership skills, but at 71 he's far too young."
I ask His Wonderfulness why it is that new popes are so old.
"Simple,"
he says. "We have this theory here in Rome that if you elect an old man
and if he turns out to be a bad pope, he will not be around long enough
to cause major damage to the church. If we pick some guy in his 50s,
he's there forever and the church could be destroyed. Look at what 20
years of continuous Fianna Fail rule did to your country."
I had to admit there was some sense in that argument.
Your correspondent lives in a house containing three daughters and just the one
wife.
Over the course of a good many years I have become a feminist, if
not by inclination, then by instruction and immersion.
We revisit the vexed question of a woman pope.
"Is it not a disgrace," I ask, "that women are treated as inferior beings within the Catholic church?"
The cardinal's voice becomes more animated. He's at the level of three tenors.
"My
child, you must open your eyes and look at the world around you. I am
no misogynist. Indeed, just between ourselves and the fresco, I have two
bambinos with a lovely buxom lass in Napoli going back to the time when
the moon hit my eye like a big pizza pie.
"But we have
decided it is best to keep women out of the running of the church. They
make lists, you see. And they are not satisfied until all the items on
the list are ticked. Change must be slow or not at all. In the Vatican
the man wears the dress.
"Though I must say, in defence of women, that the concept of infallibility is one with which they are readily familiar."
OLD
misogynist that he is, he chuckles heartily at his own witticism.
Today
is February 18, the 530th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther. I
suggest to the cardinal that it is high time for another reformation,
what with all these sex abuse cover-ups, the silencing of dissenting
voices in the church and the absence of a viable strategy on
contraception in countries that are riddled with Aids.
I tell the cardinal that the prohibition of women priests is simply nonsensical.
"I
will quote John Lennon for you," says His Eminence, who is well used to
batting for the establishment and readily drifts into the safety of
dogma and prepared script.
"Lennon it was who said: 'As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.'
"Luther was married to Catherine von Bora, and what, my son, was her profession?"
Before I could answer, the cardinal had answered his own question.
"She
was a nun. Yes, a nun. A reverend mother. And it was Catherine who gave
him that list of grievances he nailed to the church door," he said.
"She
started the Reformation, and the church is still splitting up all these
years on. And do you think a woman priest could keep the gossip she
picks up in confession to herself?"
I remind His Excellency that the Virgin Mary was a woman.