On building bridges

From: Laurence Shandy
To: Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Re: Brazilian saint

Dear Mr. Ratzinger,

¡Buenos días! That's Spanish for "good day", which is British for "hi there". I know you've been in Portugese-speaking Brazil lately, but Portugese is really just an illiterate form of Spanish, so careful about going around using Spanish phrases. The Brazilians are known to kill the uppity.

But they'd have a hard time sticking you with one of their poison blowdarts, since you're traveling in the nigh-invulnerable Popemobile. Congratulations on the whole Pope thing, Mr. Ratzinger. I'm not entirely familiar with the trials one must complete to become Pope. Is it true you have to kill a silver-back gorilla with your bare hands? That may just be an urban legend. Still, I think you should consider adding that one to the list. If you don't mind my saying, Ratzo, your chosen form of Papal dress -- in fact, a dress -- tends to come off as effete. Especially in hyper-masculine, cannibalistic societies such as Brazil. Knowing you fought and killed a wild gorilla might go a long way toward butching up your image. Kind of like how a gay friend of mine, Carl, wears pants that cover his buttocks whenever he visits his family in Virginia.

Hey, speaking of cannibalism, have you tried telling the Brazilian natives about your organization's whole transubstantiation routine? Eating the blood and body of Christ is not unlike feasting on the flesh of a ripe young virgin. I don't care what Dan Brown says, Jesus had to have been a virgin. In my experience, ladies go more for the wrathful, Old Testament types. Of course, Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, I suppose. Did Jesus have any disposable income? I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that there's a lot of ways to win over our friends south of the equator. Bonding over the deliciousness of man-meat (human muscle, I mean, not cock) is just one way. I'm glad to see you've thought outside the box and transmogrified one of your Brazilian-born missionaries into a real-live saint. Too bad the guy's dead, though. Who knows what kind of good he could have done with his new saint powers. Feats of strength, light shows from his fingers -- those savages are pretty easily impressed. Weren't they the ones who worshipped a Coke bottle that time? Someone putting on a show of saint magic would have them eating from the palm of his hand -- as opposed to just eating the palm of his hand. The only trick would be in getting them to worship God and not the saint. Maybe the saint could claim to be God? That's how Jesus rigged it. Hey, and that would make the saint even more Christ-like.

Sure is a shame the guy's dead, Ratzo. Maybe next time you should consider canonizing someone who could do some good.

Not that the dead guy never did any good. He was the one who first wrote little prayers on rice-paper pills and had people swallow them to cure their cancer. What a brilliant public relations move for your organization. Even brainless savages were bound to catch on to the fact that prayer doesn't work. Lord knows a handful of Vicodin will dull the pain after an S&M romp much quicker than a little kneeling at the bedside. By handing out prayers in pill form, your new Brazilian saint was able to add at least a few decades to these people's suspension of disbelief.

And it was a win-win for the secular side, too. Anyone dumb enough to take a prayer pill for his cancer is really just another glorious victim of natural selection. Maybe you could bring that up the next time you're traveling through the United States. Bring the educated and the religious together, you know? But I'd recommend against wearing that dress. Rudy Giuliani's drag queen snapshots might cost him the Republican nomination.

How about a nice pair of jeans? Buttocks covered, of course.

Best wishes,
Laurence Shandy, gentleman