PopeWatch: Synod Blues

Father Supercilium, head of the Vatican Twitter Department, was not having a good week.

Father Supercillium:  Yes, your eminence I recognize that the tweets about the Synod were quite numerous.  (Pause)  I agree that they perhaps do seem odd when the Pope has emphasized secrecy about the proceedings of the Synod.  (Sighs) Usually all tweets for the Pope are first given to me but if the Pope decides otherwise he is of course free to do otherwise.  (Pause)  With respect eminence  I am doing my job.  (Click)

Father Supercillium held his head in his hands and thought:  (The fortieth call from a Cardinal this week.  Most of them could not recognize a tweet if it bit them on the bottom, but of course they have staffers who are obsessive about Twitter, or rather X as I should call it now.)  Taking a large bottle of Chianti from a bottom desk drawer he uncorks it and takes a swig.

Thinking:  (Ah for the halcyon days before this Synod.  I had a good thing going.  Almost no work and Sister Calamus to do the writing.  A sweet young thing, but perhaps not as naive as most Americans.   She may be much shrewder than I first thought.   She is an excellent writer.  She wrote the tweets, I got praised and the Pope was usually as happy as a man with his evil temper can be.)

Another swig and then more thinking:  (Now the Pope is suddenly making his own posts on the Synod, quite a few of the Cardinals are upset and I am being accused of not doing my job.  When I gave him the tweets composed by Sister Calamus he rejected them out of hand this week.  When he did so, he smiled, always a bad sign with this Pope, and told me to tell Sister Calamus that she did a good job, but that two could play games.  Sister claimed that she had no idea what he is talking about.  The old grouch is getting even more paranoid.)

The phone then began ringing and Father Supercillium looked at it with resigned annoyance and trepidation.