I’ve always noticed a striking resemblance between Joseph Ratzinger and Palpatine from Star Wars. As it turns out, art really does imitate life, namely Ratzinger’s rather odious life:

Pope John Paul II, predecessor of the current pope, Joseph Ratzinger, is one unverifiable miracle away from sainthood this weekend, following a beatification ceremony Sunday at the Vatican. Sister Marie Simon Pierre claimed she was cured of Parkinson's disease after praying to Pope John Paul. John Paul died of Parkinson’s. How convenient. Too bad he couldn’t pray to himself or to one of the other legions of mortals the Catholic Church has raised to god-status through the centuries.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times - The reliquary containing the blood of Pope John Paul II was placed on a pedestal during the beatification ceremony by Sister Marie Simon Pierre, right, who says she was cured of Parkinson's disease after praying to John Paul II, and Sister Tobiana. Sister Tobiana cared for the late pope.

Neither John Paul, nor Ratzinger are deserving of canonization, of course, since their collective track record on human rights is contemptible at best. John Paul looked the other way when bishops and others within his own church were accused of pedophilia, failed to administer swift justice on the accused or failed to report or covered up cases altogether. Here is The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd:

… John Paul forfeited his right to beatification when he failed to establish a legal standard to remove pedophiles from the priesthood, and simply turned away for many years.

… How can you be a saint if you fail to protect innocent children?

Ratzinger’s record is hardly any cleaner. You know a church has major internal problems when one of the most dominant links on the front of its website reads, “Abuse of minors, the church’s response.”

John Paul was also well known for his stance against condom use, a stance that no doubt has caused untold suffering in Africa and other parts of the world after the Church openly condemned condom use in impoverished countries, ludicrously claiming in 2003 that condoms were ineffective because they had tiny holes in them. Ratzinger’s statements about condoms are barely any more enlightening.

The current pope is well aware of the continued heat being placed on the church because of these and other misdeeds. Thus, as Catholic officials are apt to do, Ratzinger simply made up the rules as he went along, waiving the traditional five-year wait for beatification and went ahead with proceedings weeks after John Paul gave up the ghost, the latter presumably not finding the correct saint on which to pray to save himself from the incurable disease. Here is Ratzinger at the ceremony talking and largely misrepresenting John Paul:

He was witness to the tragic age of big ideologies, totalitarian regimes, and from their passing John Paul II embraced the harsh suffering, marked by tension and contradictions, of the transition of the modern age toward a new phase of history, showing constant concern that the human person be its protagonist.

Ratzinger called John Paul “blessed,” which means he can now be exalted in public, presumably putting him just a step below Jesus. Sainthood then, in everyone’s eyes except deluded Catholic officials and followers, will place John Paul on the same tier as Jesus in the stupendously fabricated and polytheistic world of Roman Catholicism. I wonder if the good shepherd himself would take offense.