Friday, December 21, 2012

Does the Pope have a pink bathroom?

(There was a splurge post on Pius xii in this place for a few hours this morning which will be edited and reposted later, in case you are wondering).

As is now known all over the interwebs Pope Benedict xvi has written an op-ed [registration required] for the Financial Times which L'Osservatoro Romano helpfully reproduces.

At FT.com "the response of Jesus" in the first paragraph (quoting "render unto Caesar") is hyperlinked to Matthew 22 in the God's Word Translation but "the birth of Christ" at the beginning of the fifth paragraph is hyperlinked to Luke 2 in the New International Version. In both cases it is to the text hosted at BibleGateway.com. All three are Protestant institutions. This is not something to do with previous settings because those are the results when I used a browser with a cleared cache.

The following is at the bottom of the article:

The writer is the Bishop of Rome and author of ‘Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives’

Oh you mean that Pope Benedict xvi!

I imagine an Anglican subeditor having had some fun with all this, but I am sure that is just fantasy.


*The post title is a reference to the following sketch from Not the Nine O'Clock News, which I can't find on YouTube. The FT is printed on pink paper.
Reader 1 (Rowan Atkinson): I buy The Daily Telegraph, because it doesn't try to tell me what to think. It just reports the news. 
Reader 2 (Griff Rhys-Jones): I buy the Daily Express, because it informs me quickly, tells me what's going on, and let's me get on with my job. 
Reader 3 (Mel Smith): I read the Financial Times [beat] because I've got a pink bathroom.

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