The faithful hold a cut-out of Pope Francis as he leads the Angelus prayer from the window of the apostolic palace at the Vatican last Sunday. Photo: Reuters/Max RossiThe faithful hold a cut-out of Pope Francis as he leads the Angelus prayer from the window of the apostolic palace at the Vatican last Sunday. Photo: Reuters/Max Rossi

In a world where all is turning possible, what will we, believers – especially we staunch Catholics – do if the Pope wakes up one great day in Rome and declares from his most beautiful balcony at the Vatican that, after all, there isn’t a God?

Theology aside, and, most importantly, infallibility aside, what would happen?

The throngs would most probably ransack Rome again: a Visigoth revival, a déjà vu scenario of barbarians looting the Eternal City. Now the louts shouting and hollering at the Pope and his fallacy would be the faithful.

The ones who have faith inscribed deep in their blood and veins will attack the poor Pope and lay siege on Rome and the rest of the non-believers.

It was already rather troubling when Pope John Paul II was unwell. I have no idea of the machinations of the Vatican but when that Pope, soon to be an anointed saint, was unwell and seemingly not capable of carrying on his papacy, all was held in abeyance.

His passing away solved the problem but what if he had lived on and on, getting frailer and incapacitated?

Nobody seemed to know what should be done when faced with an infirm Pope. Thankfully, the Pope who followed him, Benedict, decided way before he became too infirm to actually rock the belief that papacy is for life and he resigned of his own accord.

But there is – besides the atheistic horrific scenario – another scenario which needs consideration.

Of course, I have no knowledge of things connected to divinity and theology but I do not think the Vatican, the cardinals or the faithful could have done anything if, instead of just an infirmity of the body, the Pope had an infirmity of the mind. What if a Pope goes mad?

What if the Pope, who is chosen for life by a band of cardinals, and who is a supreme pontiff and sole arbiter of when he can go, or what he can do and say, goes loopy?

Besides the obvious heresy mentioned above – saying there’s nothing up in heaven after all – he could also start doing out-of-line things like approving gay marriages and adoptions by gay couples or say that sex out of wedlock is permissible under canon law. He might even endorse some particular brand of birth control.

I’m sure the Vatican, in its own mysterious ways, has some hidden way of stopping this from happening. One tongue – horrid man, he was – actually said to me once that no Pope can do any wrong as he is always led on a string by the cohorts at the Vatican. But if the Vatican can control such stuff we, the faithful know not how it operates.

This Pope is doing all sorts of things that are rocking the foundations of the old conservative Catholic Church

Can a Pope be impeached? In the bad old days when popes had concubines and children they even appointed their own ungodly offspring to top positions and even gave them, denying divine meritocracy, sacred posts as cardinals.

In those horrendous days, popes were then dethroned, defrocked, exiled and sometimes more than one Pope sat on their resplendent thrones.

But, in this day and age, who can issue the edict that a Pope is fired? Or that he should make way and take early retirement?

This Pope is doing all sorts of things that are rocking the foundations of the old conservative Catholic Church.

He walks around feeding the homeless, he has a tiny car and lives in a tiny place.

Opulence is out of the window and he berates bishops and cardinals for doing anything ostentatious.

He asked atheists to join him in fighting war and invited them to unite on a peace mission.

He even asked the whole wide world – Catholic, of course – to fill in a survey to tell him what we Catholic mortals think of family life.

Sadly, somewhere down the line at the Vatican, I imagine some stuffy functionary got hold of what the Pope intended us to fill in and turned it into a sheet of incomprehensible stuff.

Maybe soon we, merry Catholics and dreary atheists, could be asked to decide what other changes should be wrought.

We could be asked what songs to play at Mass, what sermons to hear and maybe whether indulgences-against-payment should be re-introduced like in the good old days.

Maybe we could also be asked to go the whole hog and start electing, selecting and deselecting canons, cardinals and the mighty Pope himself by universal suffrage.

That would be one sure way to solve the dilemma of a senile Pope – have him voted out.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.