Pope Receives Summer Re-Education Camp Arts and Crafts Project

So the Pope is in South America right now and at a recent audience, some guy brought him a geegaw as a diplomatic gift. It’s a truly ugly reworking of a hammer and sickle into a crucifix, and the pope’s magnificent “What the WTF?” expression .brings tears of laughter to my eyes. Here, watch for yourself:

I often wonder how many such crappy art projects are squirreled away in the Vatican equivalent of Warehouse 13, awaiting some future spelunker a thousand years from now who will find it, shrouded in cobwebs and dust and ask, “What the hell?”

Francis is, of course, polite (as you are when you get that VISIT ATLANTIC CITY battery powered necktie for Christmas from your brother-in-law). But it’s not very hard to see that this cringeworthy attempt by a Commie to suck up to the Church is… well… cringeworthy. His remark on this piece of kitsch was “That’s not right” (delivered, I like to imagine, this way):

But, of course, that’s not good enough for the Reactionaries at Pewsitter and similar sites, who are freaking out about “FrancisChurch” and “Commie Jesus” and similar rubbish.

Me: I think the image of Francis looking in bafflement at that… thing is just hilarious and makes me wonder how many other winceable art projects, knicknack, tschotschkes, and trinkets the pope has to hand off to some luckless functionary every day–and where it all goes. Somebody should write a book about that. Meanwhile, I content myself with this image: