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Poor Vatican

By pharyngula on February 3, 2011.

The Pope must be wearing ratty, ragged underwear under those silk robes; all the fancy gold statues in the Vatican must be gilt over rotting wood; the famous paintings are all cheap reproductions. The place must be on the verge of economic collapse. At least, that's what I assume must be the case, since the UK government paid for the Pope's visit out of Department for International Development funds, a part of the budget that is normally earmarked for aid to "war-torn or fragile states" as part of a commitment to fight global poverty.

So the Vatican must be sort of like Somalia. I had no idea they were in such a dire state.

I'm a middle-class kind of guy who is doing all right economically right now. But I think next time I visit Minneapolis I'm going to get my gas money by beating up some homeless folk, and then I'm going to eat by crashing a soup kitchen…oh, and I'm bigger than those scrawny half-starved old codgers, so I'm going to demand double helpings of everything. Don't think badly of me, I'll just be trying to live up to the Catholic ideal.

Tags
Politics
religion

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