Pope John Paul II passed away Saturday, which should make Guy Ritchie feel really bad about his Purim lampooning last week. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon called the papal father of the Christian world “a man of peace, a friend of the Jewish people,” considering he didn’t order any inquisitions or pogroms in his 26-year reign. He did do his best to reconcile Jewish/Catholic relations, and we hope he gets to keep his tall white hat up in heaven.
The church’s top position needs to be filled as soon as possible, lest the pious world dissolve into anarchy, and it looks like the next in line could be Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Holocaust survivor who converted to Catholicism as a young man. Described as charismatic with a gift for paradox, Lustiger “has become a living bridge over the river of bad blood, mischief and mistrust that has divided the relationship between Catholicism and Judaism for 2,000 years.”
Not to get all New Testament symbol-y on y’all, but isn’t a Jewish Pope one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse or something?
(Hat tips to Jewschool and Jewlicious.)