The Supreme Pontiff’s gravy boat hums at dizzying speed through the convoluted corridors of the Vat-1-kan. Much as the famous Popemobile, its forerunner from a distant century, was also known as “Il Galatino” (the little ice-cream van), so the “gravy boat” certainly resembles a sauce cruet, although the word “gravy” in this case is probably a vulgarization of its gravity drive. The papal vector, on this occasion only bearing an “ectoplex” of His Holiness on some internal mission, hovers about six inches from the floor, when it isn’t swinging, swooping and diving like a fairground gondola around obstacles and corners.

The Holy Father is a man in a hurry. Evil has become omnipresent in the era of Web 7.0, so goodness needs to be at least highly mobile. Although the Pope is a singularity - no data or gene clone of a Type One personage being permitted by law - yet he may be represented at a ceremonial level by a strictly limited staff of such ectoplasmic expressions (semi-independent para-beings capable of blessing, celebrating mass, receiving delegations) as well as any number of AI holograms. The world is an incredibly dangerous and complex place, even for those living in the relative safety of one of the three Legitimate States. Being “The Pope” has become an awesomely heavy responsibility, despite the reassuring presence of the other Supreme-Team members: “The Lie-Lama”, “Man-Dela”, “Mega-Mao”, “O’Bama”, “Frost’n’Oprah”, “The Great Nerd”, “Über Wonk”, “LadyDi”, “Lenin & McCarthy” and, of course, “The Secretary Generalissimo” ...

How many divisions has the Pope? To Stalin’s famous question I would reply: a whole lot more than you, Big Red, and that’s even in these difficult times of scandals, falling church numbers and a shrinking priesthood. Divisions, sub-divisions, long-divisions and televisions. But by choosing to resign from a job that was traditionally considered a life sentence, Mr Ratzinger has punted, in absentia, the paraphrased great question: what is the Pope, that we are mindful of him? What exactly is a Pope today, and what do we-the-people (not the faithful) expect from him? Because steering the Holy Catholic Church through choppy waters seems to be the least important part of the job, now that most of the Pope’s twitter fans are not actually members of his core constituency. For every practising Catholic there are a dozen who really are only practising, another dozen who are lapsed, a further dozen who are rocking the ship of faith from within, yet a dozen more who are closet dissidents or heretics-in-waiting and about a thousand who have never seen the inside of a church except as tourists and never will. Many of his most ardent fans are neither holy nor Catholic nor church-going. They are Jack & Jill average on a bad day, needing a little certainty, a little guidance, a hand on their elbow now and again, or a pat on the back when they do better than expected ... all those things, in other words, that government doth not provide. An infinitesimal part of this broadest of churches is the tiny nucleus of extant Arnolfinis, past masters at assimilation: Jews in 14th century Italy, Catholics in 15th century Holland, Anglicans in 16th century London, their blood is now mingled, in the person of Angelica Valentina Laetitia Arnolfini (born 14th February 2013 after an easy pregnancy but a rather complex and wearisome process of conception), with the fierce faith of dissenters from the Rhondda.

The Supreme Pontiff’s current demographic is, if not exactly all of us (I cannot speak for the “great unwashed”, nor the teeming minions of Allah), certainly most of those whose idea of civilization is a three-day weekend now and then with sole possession of remote, and whose religion is an entirely unorganised, vaguely Judeo-Christian sense of being party to certain un-named “values” and therefore decent enough to pass muster with the Almighty without recourse to regular maintenance of the vino and a wafer variety. This congregation ranges from those who are too well-bred to whine to the kind of confessional junkies who need an entire talk show rather than a quiet box in the apse. The former expect the Pope to be seen but not heard, unless it be to reassert the very code they already think they live by, while the latter would like a Pope who kisses airport runways, pardons assassins, is friend to the widow and orphan and always good for a parade and a bit of waving. Others await the Gay Pride Pope, the Apology for Central and South American Genocide Pope, the Radical People’s Pope, the Pope who will Smite Islam, the Pope who will Reconcile Islam, the Inquisitor of Corrupt Practises Pope, the Luminous Pope of Unnatural Holiness (so holy that he lets the rest of us completely off the hook), or his dark side counterpart, the Deeply Flawed Pope, whose legacy of perfidy and scandalous (preferably pedophile) behaviour will emerge from a backdrop of sanctimonious piety at the most embarrassing moment imaginable and reconcile us all with our inner saint, as well as provide us with a wondrous and most unusual sense of being all the better and holier for having read the tabloids.

One cannot be more Catholic than the Pope, he’s the only one who gets to chuck his job in Latin! Yet the Pontiff himself is expected to be a lot more Papal than he is Catholic. His secular status as a figure of continuity, bellwether and compass is more important to a world hungry for ethical values (but unprepared to pay top dollar for them) than his pastoral role. The Pope’s job in the real world is to be that braying agent of conscience we can safely ignore if the perilous result of such insouciance is still far enough down the road. He is Jiminy Cricket to the Pinocchio of science and progress. The next Pope must needs carry this to a new level. He must become Universal Pope, a Pope for all people, all needs, all special interests and all seasons: an all-weather, all-access, all-time-zones kind of Pope for a 24/7 news cycle. Mr Ratzinger knew he could never fit that bill, so he stepped down, wisely making space for the first Pope of the Post-Modern, neo-apocalyptic epoch, the era of Big Pope. The best thing Monsignor NextPope could do would be to patent himself, register his brand and open an eternal, universal surrogate father franchise of the spotless papacy. The papal brand could do great things in association with big church, of course, but also with big oil, big pharma and big agro-biz. It could redeem national debts and make banking respectable again. It could put faith back into the fisheries industry.

Meanwhile the Pope as Papa could dole out advice and comfort on his own TV channels, RSS feeds, Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups. Airlines and high-tech hardware you could really believe in would surely follow. There’s a make of American guitar that gets prayed over at every step in its construction. Vat-1-kan could become the first tech brand to incorporate holiness into a silicon chip. And then, once an image had been sufficiently developed, the Pope could become the Colonel Sanders of spirituality, right down to the finger-lickin’ and the secret spicy recipe for incense. The ectoplasmic ghosts of Castle Gandolfo would gather round to advise and inform this virtual papacy of the airwaves and the networks. The digitized and sanitized content of the Holy See would resonate through his synaptic encoding. He need never be seen again as anything other than the reassuring, sometimes admonishing, righteous yet jovially jolly ho-ho Saint Peter of all generations. No wear, no tear, no replacement required ... a bonafide, big brother, PermaPope. Lifetime would mean for life once more, and not just one life, but all lives for ever and ever, Amen. Habemus Papam? No thanks, we already have one. PermaPope is dope, bringing opium of the people for the people, direct to people like you on the street where you live!


© Edwin Drood, February 2013