Bye, Bye Benedict: The Pope Resigns

Joseph Ratzinger was awoken on the morning of the 11th of February 2013 by a ray of Roman sunshine bearing down on his weathered face. Slowly, one eye creeped open. ‘Shit’, he thought. ‘Monday morning.’

For most of us, Monday morning means getting up and getting back into the daily grind, quietly longing for the freedom of the weekend (unless you work for a company making funny tshirts, of course). For Joseph, it meant facing another week of child sex abuse scandals, the nagging feeling that religion might not be as popular as it once was and possibly the occasional snarky phone call from Richard Dawkins. Joseph, you see, was the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI

You might recognise Him…

As he glanced wearily across St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI – as Joseph was known when he wasn’t being called ‘God’s Rottweiler’ – recalled not the many trials presented in the Bible, but rather of Danny Glover’s character in Lethal Weapon. ‘I’m too old for this shit’, Pope Benedict uttered dejectedly.

To cut a long, entirely fictional story short (although we hope the history books will pick up on the RedMolotov version of events), Pope Benedict unexpectedly announced this morning that he was packing this being Pope stuff in because he was too old to deal with it all. And at 85 years old, who could blame him?

Pope Benedict became the first Pope in over 500 years to resign the Papacy, presumably writing a letter to the big guy in the sky expressing his thanks for the opportunity and how he just wants to try new things and ‘find himself’. He now has to work an extremely awkward notice period in which he has to muster up the strength to work rather than picturing himself having a righteous time on the beach.

For many, Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered as a Papal firefighter, a man who at 78 years old was tasked with fighting near constant allegations of sexual abuse in the church and other such scandals. To others, Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered as a conservative relic, a man in the right place at the wrong time, a leader not quite attuned enough to modern society to bring the Catholic Church into the 21st Century.

For most, however, Pope Benedict will be remembered as the man who used his first visit to Africa in 2009 to declare that the distribution of condoms would, in fact, make the AIDs crisis worse. He also took the chance to declare that ‘A Christian never remains silent’, something we’re sure anyone who’s ever been accosted by the various street preachers on the Great British high street will attest to.

Benedict will also be remembered for his preaching of religious tolerance, particularly when he quoted a medieval transcription which described the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as ‘evil and inhuman’ and managed to spark off a few riots too. Let’s just hope they haven’t seen our Muhammad t-shirt and accidentally mistaken it for a picture of a certain religious prophet yet…

Not The Prophet Muhammad

Not that one. Honestly.

Pope Benedict also managed to insult the gay community by declaring that protecting heterosexuality was as important to the survival of the human race as protecting rainforests, while having a good old go at offending the Jewish and Anglicans by lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying priest and making it easier for Anglicans offended by the prospect of gay marriage to become Catholic.

As a company who sells atheist t-shirts, you can probably guess which side of the fence RedMolotov falls down on when it comes to Pope Benedict. Nevertheless, we’d never lambast and lampoon an elderly and ill man.

Instead, we’ve decided to leave that to the good folks over on Twitter. Here’s a few of our favourite jokes from this morning:

So there he goes, Pope Benedict XVI: leader, wearer of large hat, conservative. Let’s hope the next Pope is just as goo…actually, we’ll leave it at that.