Pope Benedict XVI

Magazine Depicts Pope as Half-Naked Woman
By Katie Yoder | March 8, 2013 | 2:29 PM EST

Talk about edgy comedy. A daring magazine has depicted Mohammed as a sexy, topless woman wearing a turban and holding Muslim prayer beads while staring inquisitively into the clouds. On the front cover.

Just kidding. It’s actually another boring attack on Catholicism. Lucy Pinder, a 29-year-old U.K. model who can’t seem to keep her clothes on, graced the April issue cover of Loaded, a young men’s magazine that boasts a 1.4 million monthly readership. She stood provocatively in the picture, baring her chest with white robes and a priest’s stole hugging her shoulders. She stared into the sky while wearing one cross around her neck and holding another in her hand.

NBC Touts 'Controversial Theories' About Pope's Resignation That Claim Scandal 'As Big As Watergate'
By Kyle Drennen | March 8, 2013 | 1:01 PM EST

On Friday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Lester Holt hyped unfounded speculation surrounding the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI: "More than a week after his resignation became official, there are still a lot of controversial theories about why Pope Benedict XVI stepped down. NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel is looking into them at the Vatican." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Previewing a report for Rock Center, Engel proclaimed: "What we still don't know, not definitively anyway, is why Pope Benedict decided to retire....[Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi] exposed some of the Vatican's most guarded secrets. A scoop seen in Italy as big as Watergate. Italians call it 'Vatileaks.'"

Reuters Boosts Exhibition Slamming Pope Emeritus, Catholic Church
By Matthew Balan | March 6, 2013 | 7:12 PM EST

Naomi O'Leary's Tuesday article for Reuters about a piece of "artwork" blasting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI could have been mistaken for a press release, as the journalist merely gave a platform for the same-sex couple behind the display to voice their anti-Catholic views. Most of the quotes in O'Leary's write-up came from artists Antonio Garullo and Mario Ottocento, "the first Italian gay couple to be married when they wed in Holland in 2002."

The correspondent emulated a publicist as she spotlighted how the exhibition is supposedly a "life-size model of Benedict in a confessional box, his sumptuous red and cream-colored robes spread about him."

Bashing Benedict Cont.: Scandalous Coverage Of Pope’s Retirement Day
By Katie Yoder | March 1, 2013 | 3:33 PM EST

The final count is in. From the day of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement to the day of his retirement, the networks unabashedly attacked the pope and the Catholic Church, adding to a pope resignation coverage tally of referencing the church as troubled 157 times and using the world “scandal” 105 times in 118 reports. 

A previous Culture and Media Institute tally noted the frequency ABC, CBS, and NBC referred to the church as troubled, aired the word “scandal,” and ran late night comedy show clips cracking pope jokes. Pressing for church modernization and calling for a change in regards to women and gays also made the list.

New York Times Ushers Pope Benedict Out Under Clouds of 'Scandal and Intrigue'
By Clay Waters | March 1, 2013 | 2:56 PM EST

Pope Benedict XVI served his final day as pontiff on Thursday, and the New York Times' Rome bureau chief Rachel Donadio sent him on his way from Vatican City under a dark cloud: "As Pope Departs, Discord Remains at Vatican."

As the sun set on Rome and on his turbulent eight-year papacy, Pope Benedict XVI, a shy theologian who never seemed entirely at home in the limelight, was whisked by helicopter into retirement on Thursday.

But while Benedict, 85, retires to a life of prayer, study, walks in the garden and piano practice, he leaves in his wake a Vatican hierarchy facing scandals and intrigue that are casting a shadow over the cardinals entrusted with electing his successor in a conclave this month.

MSNBC Features 'Berkeley Catholic' and NARAL Board Member Karen Finney Attacking Church for Lacking Moral Conviction
By Ken Shepherd | February 28, 2013 | 5:53 PM EST

I don't know about you, but when I think about a person who has the moral standing to call out the Catholic Church for a lack of moral conviction, I think of abortion-on-demand advocate Karen Finney. Okay, not really, but apparently MSNBC does.

On the February 28 edition of The Cycle, the former DNC communications director and current NARAL Pro-Choice America board member explained her thoughts as a "Berkeley Catholic" who wants to see the Church do more for the poor and downtrodden, while piping down when it comes to teaching biblical sexual ethics and opposing abortion (emphasis mine):

ABC: Pope Is ‘King, Attending His Own Funeral’
By Katie Yoder | February 28, 2013 | 4:20 PM EST

Although the first pope to resign in 600 years, Pope Benedict XVI might as well be dead to the media as cardinals elect a new pope. On the day of the Roman Catholic pope’s resignation, February 28, ABC’s “Good Morning America” offered repulsive input and likened the monumental event to Pope Benedict XVI participating in his own funeral.

A voiceover described how Pope Benedict XVI bade farewell to cardinals in the very room popes lie after death, the Clementine Hall at the Apostolic Palace, before reporting: “Unlike all the past popes whose reigns have ended in this room since the palace was built and the walls covered in frescos, Benedict is the first to leave office still breathing – like a king, attending his own funeral.”

Andrew Sullivan Smears Pope Again
By Bill Donohue | February 28, 2013 | 11:04 AM EST

Former Time and Newsweek blogger Andrew Sullivan accuses the pope of being a homosexual. His evidence? The pope’s “handsome male companion [Archbishop Georg Ganswein] will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day.” Sullivan asks, “Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement?”
 
Speaking about what is normal is hardly normal for Sullivan. To be specific, in 2001 he solicited anal sex with anonymous men by posting a picture of his torso on the Internet. He explicitly requested to have sex with men who did not wear condoms, begging for orgies. Unfortunately for him, he was outed by his boyfriends after they recognized it was his body.

Bashing Benedict: Networks Make Pope Butt of Jokes, Center of Scandal
By Katie Yoder | February 28, 2013 | 10:15 AM EST

A frail, ailing 85-year-old man announces he doesn’t have the strength to continue as the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion people. With the humility of one whose entire life has been in service to God and his Church, he says he will retire to quietly live out his remaining years.

Cue the laugh track and gin up the scandal rumors. It was three weeks full of journalistic contempt for the Pope and the Catholic Church.

NBC: 'Knives Came Out' When Pope Announced Abdication, Church in 'Holy Mess'
By Kyle Drennen | February 27, 2013 | 5:40 PM EST

Keeping up NBC's barrage of attacks against the Catholic Church in the days leading up to Pope Benedict XVI's abdication, on Wednesday's Today, correspondent Anne Thompson made this nasty declaration: "...as one observer said, the stiletto knives came out as the battle for control of this institution begins, that some say is a holy mess....reports of infighting, back stabbing, and political jockeying that could make corporate America or Capitol Hill blush." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Thompson never bothered to identify the "observer" she mentioned nor the origin of the "reports" she cited. Wrapping up the piece, Thompson asked Italian novelist Alessandra Borghese: "Could you make up the drama that's going on inside the Vatican?...You couldn't make this stuff up?"

WashPost's Horowitz Mars Otherwise Decent Item on Pope Benedict XVI with Quip About Retired Pope in Hell in Dante's 'Inferno'
By Ken Shepherd | February 27, 2013 | 12:44 PM EST

Washington Post staff writer Jason Horowitz marred an otherwise decent Style section feature item on Pope Benedict's resignation in his lead paragraph, which made a crack about the pontiff's retirement by hoping it goes off better than that of Pope Celestine V, whom Dante supposedly envisioned in Hell:

VATICAN CITY — On an April 2009 visit to the Italian mountain town of Sulmona, Pope Benedict XVI solemnly placed his pallium, the vestment symbolizing his papal authority, on the tomb of Celestine V. The medieval pontiff’s abdication in 1294 had resulted in imprisonment by his successor and banishment to hell by Dante for “the great refusal.” Benedict is no doubt hoping for a better retirement plan.

So Long, Pope Benedict: CNN Hosts Radical Nun Calling Papal Election 'Invalid'
By Matt Hadro | February 27, 2013 | 11:19 AM EST

After CNN's initial report on Pope Benedict's final papal audience, the first guest to appear on CNN Newsroom on Wednesday was a radical leftist nun who believes the upcoming papal election is "invalid" because no women are involved.

Sister Donna Quinn lashed out: "We women are calling this papal election invalid. It has to be declared fraudulent because it has no women included in the process. By that I mean there are no women on the ballot in the conclave, there are no women voters, there are no women in the whole process, so we're very distressed." No church representative appeared to challenge Quinn's views; only CNN's Vatican analyst John Allen was on the air with Quinn.