Pope: Have you captured them all?
Swiss Guard Captain: Not yet Holiness.
Pope: How many are they?
Swiss Guard Captain: Hard to say Holiness. My best guess is forty-eight.
Pope: How could forty-eight sheep be smuggled into the Apostolic Palace?
Swiss Guard Captain: I don’t know Holiness. My men saw nothing.
Pope: Your hombres didn’t see forty-eight sheep painted azul y dorado?
Swiss Guard Captain: So they said, Holiness.
Pope: I do not believe them, but that is a matter for another day. How are we going to get them out?
Swiss Guard Captain: Border collies Holiness, and shepherds.
Pope: Shepherds? How are we going to get good shepherds in Rome?
Swiss Guard Captain: I concede that is a problem Holiness.
Pope: Has anyone taken responsibility?
Swiss Guard Captain: A group calling itself the Sheep Ukrainian Liberation League.
Pope: What do they want?
Swiss Guard Captain: For the Church to stand behind Ukraine and for you to sing the Ukrainian national anthem in a video.
Pope: They obviously have not heard me sing. That would be a war crime.
good one Don. And what did Jesus say to Peter when he reappeared by the Sea of Galilee? “Feed my sheep!”
Pope: Shepherds? How are we going to get good shepherds in Rome?
Swiss Guard Captain: I concede that is a problem Holiness.
Ha! Good one. Yes and the jokes on him.
The Pope hasn’t called out Russia because he doesn’t have the courage to do so and it has nothing to do with ecumenical unity and “respect” for the Orthodox Church.
St PJP2 didn’t call for ecumenical unity with Russia, when he was alive, nor did he apologise for it. Even after meeting Putin, it was a frosty encounter.
Someone should let Pope Francis know that Putin has always had disdain for the Catholic Church, because he didn’t like that the Catholic Church sought converts in Russia. A Russia where Christians were afraid to be Christians for decades. After the fall of Communism, Russia was expelling Catholic Priests and rejecting Visas for visiting Catholic clergy. Yet at the same time the sneaky person he was, on the international stage Putin was calling for “unity” between the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church. Calling for unity but rejecting the Catholic Church presence in his own country?
And in the meantime, the Pope sits quiet and panders to the Orthodox Patriarch. This whilst the Ukrainian Bishop is left to stand alone in his condemnation of Russia. Better without him I say.