Pray for Papa Benedict...

...at this time of difficulty. And rejoice that he found such a gigantic wave of love and enthusiasm from those vast crowds in Milan. The theft of letters from the Holy Father's office is going to be the subject of endless gossip and speculation. One possibility is that it may have been carried out by dupes who believed that they were really "helping" the Pope by stealing his correspondence. I have often been appalled by the way in which stupid Catholics will accept nutcase freemasons-in-the-vatican-who-surround-the-pope conspiracy theories (think Visions/Huge Secrets Not Yet Revealed/Paul VI-was-really-a-lookalike/Vatican-II-was-all-a-plot etc etc). This kind of gullibility can be used and abused. Meanwhile, thank God for a serene and courageous Pope, and for the thousands and thousands who turned out to cheer him today. As always, he talked a lot of sense: I like his idea of families helping other families and his rallying call to the young was magnificent...