As much as the Pope deserves our outrage and contempt, I don’t think he deserves to be physically assaulted. A crazy person jumped the barrier during a Christmas Eve mass and knocked Ratzinger to the ground. He was unhurt, but an 87-year-old French Cardinal who was also knocked down broke his hip (which is an extraordinarily serious injury for an octogenarian).
I love it that you still call him Ratzinger. So do I. Besides, he *looks* like a Ratzinger. ;)
I’m not sure anyone deserves to be assaulted, but if anyone does it’s the Pope. For the amount of suffering that the Catholic church contributes to the African AIDS epidemic, I can hardly think of a more contemptable figure head in the world at the moment.
I prefer the name “Benny the Rat,” though I’m not sure where I first heard it. In the show, you were dead on. Sure, the papacy continues to kill through its anti-condom dictates, but the important fact is that an elderly man received a life-altering injury. I haven’t seen much information yet, but I’ll go out on a limb and say the assailant probably wasn’t a member of any atheist organizations.
Maybe she just mistook him for Ringo Starr and wanted a lock of his hair.