OK Joe, how many popes would be the right number? There's been up to three at a time in the past. And what about anti-popes?

The thread is misnamed, by the way. This guy isn't fit to lick the boots of Pope John Paul, who in his four weeks in the job made clear his intention to sweep away much of the big-business intrigue and corruption rampant in the Vatican. Makes you wonder why he died so suddenly and was (exceptionally) cremated before anyone had a chance to find out? Of course, with his early demise, Vatican links with organised crime continued unchecked, and John-Paul II was quick to give Bishop Marcinkus sanctuary in the Vatican, as a fugitive from justice.

Just amazing that the present incumbent had the gall to inherit his predecessor's name, which had been adopted to signal a bridge between the ecumenically minded John XXIII and the austere Paul VI. J-P has done everything in his power to dismantle the consequences of John XXIII's great legacy, Vatican II.

He has canonised the founder of that separatist cult Opus Dei, along with hundreds of priests who supported the fascist Franco in Spain; and beatified Cardinal Stepinac, who as an archbishop worked hand-in- glove with the genocidal clero-fascist puppet ruler of Croatia and Bosnia during WW2. To fast-track some of his more dubious promotions, including Stepinac, he decided to waive proof of miracles in the case of martyrs. Stepinac was deemed to be a martyr, though he died at home of natural causes. (You couldn't make it up.)

Strictly speaking, popes don't create saints, they discern that God has done the honours. This pope must have been on commission. He has been vigilant enough to "discern" more saints than all the previous popes in history, put together.

Since John Paul II has shown he has no intention of issuing unqalified apologies for his church spiriting Nazi war criminals to South America and for many other crimes, and has allowed the doctrinaire thug Ratzinger to spout his bile unchecked, it might be appropriate for believers to pray that he is allowed to linger on, as a living embarrassment to the power-crazed mob of cardinals around him.