It was only a matter of time before the Pope’s many indiscretions caught up with him and forced him to resign. He persuaded one of the cardinals to take his points when the Popemobile was clocked by speed cameras doing a stately 12mph in a 10mp zone inside Vatican City, as the Pontiff was engaged in some discrete kerb-crawling. His first instinct - to plead infallibility, as usual - was undone by the discovery of performance enhancing drugs in a routine urine sample, along with unexplained traces of horse-meat. When his expenses were scrutinised, and found to include invoices for duck-houses and non-existent second homes, he knew his goose was cooked. The last straw was featuring in a kiss ‘n’ tell exposé by one of His Holiness’s many concubines.
“It’s a fair cop” were the Pope’s last words to his children and grandchildren before turning himself in to Vatican City police and pleading guilty to a long list of crimes and misdemeanours... including the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holy Wars, the torture and burnings of heretics, putting non-believers to death "for their own good", ethnic cleansing, genocide, converting Indians and Africans to the faith against their will, paedophile priests, discrimination against women, "the whole abortion thing" and the Catholic Church's indefensible role in the Holocaust. Having got into his stride, the Pope then apologised for "floods, pestilence, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, the recent performance by the England cricket XI and the outrageous price of replica football strips"...