Well, it was about time we took a shot at this one. If there was ever a poster child for the crazy Evangelical conspiracy nut bags, it would be the late Alberto Rivera. Most of Jack Chick's own wacko theories surrounding the Catholic church can be traced back to Alberto. As he would have you believe, he was a former member of the most exclusive branch of the Vatican, which has been the driving force for, among other things; The Nazis, Communism, Jonestown, Economic recession, the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy, and even Islam. No, this is not a joke. His life story is an earth shattering expose as to the Jesuit conspiracy, and how he was forced to flee and live his life on the lam, or at least it would be if any of this was true. If you thought Tim Todd's autobiography was full of shit, you haven't seen anything yet.

Redundant dialogue much? I get that we need exposition to inform the audience, but this is so forced and awkward I'm surprised it isn't narrated by Harrison Ford.

"Based on a true story," huh? Riiiiiiight.

Apparently Alberto was baptized by Kung Lao wearing Morpheus' trenchcoat.

"I don't understand!" Gee, you think maybe your son is only 7 years old and you're already committing him to a life of the cloth? Just a suggestion, but have you thought about letting him enjoy being a kid for a few more years before he decides on a career for himself?

His mother is pretty severe looking. Especially considering the next time we see her she's on her death bed.

OH NO!! *Laughs* oh God, Alberto's face there... there are moments where this job makes itself worthwhile.

Those curly locks of his always make me think of Little Lord Fauntleroy for some reason.

Or maybe one of the lost Stooges.

"Look Alberto, there's a time and place for you get on your knees before me, but right now your mother needs you!" *Ahem*

I'm just going to leave this here...

"Lift up your face and look at me", "Vow of Obedience", asking permission to see his family, and a surprising amount of makeup on a 9 year old (Seriously, the kid's rocking mascara, blush, and lip liner)  I'd say this is Fred Carter's repressed urges leaking through again, but given Chick Ministries' boundless hatred of Catholicism (as well as further allusions to the infamous Catholic practice) I'm pretty sure this was intentional.

I'm hoping that is a tear on his face and... not... ahem.

Y'know, I get we commonly associate Spain with this sort of Renaissance Era aristocracy... but surely Alberto would have been able to tell them that those fashion trends died out by 1944. Seriously, that dress belongs in a period drama.

The goofy getup is probably more due to the Catholic thing than the Spanish thing when you get right down to it.

...it is also frightening that I am beginning to understand how Chick's mind works.

QUICK!!!! Someone shoot me in the head before I begin to consume the flesh of the living!!!

Speaking of strange attire... I've noticed that no one is wearing black during his mother's final hours. Guess we can add "No respect for the dead" to the list of Catholic atrocities.

Hey can't possibly make themselves gaudy enough wearing black. Actually, I think there are terms for that.

Alberto's dad looks a little like John Astin... or Luigi by way of Danny Wells.

What exactly is it that she is dying from? She looks pretty healthy and seems pretty lucid to me.

A whole panel of completely redundant dialogue that could be easily summed up with: "Alberto, I'm scared to die! Pray for me!"

Fear of death is also a pretty natural occurrence for people. It doesn't have to have anything to do with religion or some supernatural cause to worry her like this.

The Pope took the time to visit her!? Just who are the Riveras anyways?

Jack Chick only trucks with the highest profile nut bags.

What is wrong with that priest's face? He looks like Mumbles from Dick Tracy or something.

Here we see a common fallacy that many fundies use to justify their faiths: The Near Death Experience Fallacy, which basically amounts to "I had a near-death experience where I saw Heaven/Hell." Though usually they use second or third hand accounts rather than their own. There are a number of reasons why this doesn't work, so I'm just going to stick to the two main flaws. Firstly, we have a number of explanations as to the phenomena one experiences in these situations. Most of the signs point to a sort of coping mechanism triggered by our brains to ease our psyche as we pass away. Now of course, there is the possibility that it really is a spiritual event that just provokes this sort of reactions from the meat brain. But this leads to the second fault with the fallacy; a lack of consistency in the testimonies. We've had many people go through NDE throughout the years, and their accounts range from the traditional depictions of Hell/Heaven, Lucid dreams akin to acid trips, absolute nothingness and everything in between. This results in a sort of selective account cherry picking, where they use events like the late Mrs. Rivera's experience to justify their own beliefs as it coincides with them, but when other people go through the same process with a different experience, say... the Egyptian afterlife, they'll venomously state that this was not actual death and cite the more secular explanations despite completely disregarding it when it applies to their own dogma.

Of course, this assumes that Alberto's mother really did go through something like this. Given Alberto's.... shall we say, questionable credibility, we have every reason to doubt that this ever happened.

Most people seem to have serious problems accepting that they are little more than chemical patterns in meat. Unfortunately for humanity as a whole, this leads them to make up gods and devils, and to mistake simple phenomena (like a lack of oxygen to the brain causing bizarre alterations of consciousness) to be ironclad proof of an "afterlife" where a particular mythological deity will judge your earthly needs and consign you to either eternal paradise or eternal torment.

And again, WHAT did she die of? Get-the-bitch-out-of-the-plot-itis? She has this sort of death rictus in the bottom panel but for the life of me I can't tell what kind of disease she had aside from the obvious anxiety and paranoia. Stroke? Cerebral infarct? What?!?!?!?

Uh... no, that's not how it works in Catholicism. While Priests are granted the special privileges to perform mass and absolve sin (amongst others) they are not considered to be Christ, or even remotely Christ-like, it just means that they are granted the authority to carry out certain acts that Jesus (allegedly) did. Not that we didn't expect Chick or Alberto to just make shit up about the Catholic Church... but this is just ridiculous. Ten bucks says that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"You're not my REAL dad! My real dad would let me stay up and eat all the ice cream I wanted!"

Snap into a Slim Jim!! Oh come on, like I'm the only one who thought of that when I saw the second panel.

Poor Macho Man Randy Savage. He split Hell wide open.

What is it he's snapping there if it isn't a Slim Jim? Some sort of "Jesuit stick?"

First things first Alberto, try to find the assholes who splattered all that paint on your mother's grave.

Come on, Fred. At least try to make some recognizable shapes with your colors. So far I've mostly commented on nothing but your shit art style.

Did did he care about his mother or not? First he didn't want to leave his mother for school. Then, back up in (the infamous) Panel 4 he didn't seem to give two shits about her and didn't want to leave school. Now he's all heartbroken that she died? Make up your mind, dude.

So now the Crusaders have shown up, guess it's a regular rogue's gallery of Chick's iconic characters. Any minute now I expect to see Bob Williams, Lil' Suzy and Fang.

Yep. The Ambiguously Gay Duo have marched on the scene. Who's this suave mofo Tim is talking to in the first panel though? He looks like an extra from Miami Vice.

Do I even want to know what Tim was doing with that Screwdriver?

Wait, now they're Glenco "Electronics"? In Exorcists they were Glenco International and seemed to be in the interior decorating trade. Maybe Jack realized that was just a tad too spot on for Tim and Jim here.

Chalk up another lie. There is no Academic record of Alberto Rivera receiving a Doctorate anywhere.

Alberto is a special person, all right. As in "short bus" special.

Tim and Jim are living together. I'm not saying anything, but I think we all know what's going on here by now.

Nice Ray Bans, Crockett.

With that chiseled jaw of his it's no wonder Jim and Tim are close personal friends with the guy, if you know what I'm saying.

...butt sex. What I am saying is butt sex.

I know we shouldn't buy into conspiracy theories without any sort of proof... but I think Alberto's being accompanied by the Men in Black.

"I was a Jesuit priest and a bishop".

Funny, according to the Spanish Government you were a Con Artist with a knack for writing bad checks.

This kind of smacks of Will Schnoebelen and his Mason/Catholic/Vampire/Satanist narrative.

If the Jesuits had as much power as you claim Alberto, we'd be seeing a lot more Catholic Theocracies in the world. Funny how you'll jump on any bandwagon where the Vatican can be vilified and accused, but the second someone mentions the seedy business dealings between the banks & finance industries and our politicians.... Just saying, I'm more scared of the Koch Brothers than I am Pope Francis.

I used to work for a Catholic college that was situated right next door to a Jesuit college. While ours was run down and broke the Jesuits had new technology, new buildings and tons of resources for their students. Maybe it's due to them being so deep in this conspiracy but they certainly know how to treat their people, I'll give them that.

The Pope doesn't run the-... Citation needed please.

"Please call me Alberto."

"OK... you can call me 'Oh GOD!!!'"

"You mean he is a black man?" "No James, he's white, he's just dressed in black."

I dunno, there's just something... off about that exchange there.

Perhaps it has something to do with Chick making his African-American character come off like an imbecile of biblical proportions.

Yeah, the Catholic Church electing a person of African decent to the pontificate. I can totally see that happening.

We know Alberto, you spent the first 12 pages of this dang book showing us that!! Not everyone who reads these comics is a gibbering idiot you know, I think we can remember what we read 5 minutes ago!

And once again, a religious tract gives me the best band name I could think up: Christless Eternity.

Nice allusions with the imagery there. Get it?? The gay priest is the one in pink!

And quite ample to boot. I wonder if he will grow up to be a bear.

"You stay here, Alberto. Now it's my turn. SPANK ME!!!"

"Get on your knees Alberto!" Wait, I forget. Are we being euphemistic about the Catholic molestation thing or not?

Oh come the fuck on! There is no way this scenario would play out like this. I'm calling shenanigans on you, Mr. Rivera!

Oh hey, a legitimate claim about Catholicism! I wasn't expecting that!

Gay love is God's love? Somehow I doubt the Catholics actually believe that.

It also seems like the Christian characters admit how unrealistic abstinence is but push nothing else in their educational demands. What side is Chick on?

Oof. This is a tricky one. While I haven't been able to dig up any evidence of mass graves for infants being discovered in Seville and Madrid during the 1930's, I DID find evidence of a kidnapping and human trafficking conspiracy within the Spanish Catholic Church. However, this isn't the quite the same thing, as it was more of a political act under the Franco regime, which granted privileges to the more loyal citizens. You ever think that maybe it was the corrupt government that influenced the Spanish Church and not the other way around Alberto?

Tim says "I've heard some old wive's tales..." and Alberto just perks right up. This one is going to just do all the work for you, Al.

Yep, seems all of the references to these skeletons cite this comic as the source for their claims. They found close to 800 child skeletons below a home for unmarried mothers in Tuam, Ireland, but those deaths were mostly due to malnutrition and disease, not suffocation.

Well...no, it really wouldn't destroy the Church if they were to revoke the celibacy laws. Sure, it would be a radical change that may bring about controversy, but it wouldn't collapse the system like that. After all, the Eastern Catholic branch does not practice celibacy and still pays tribute to the Holy Father.

I'm sure the Episcopalians would pick up the slack. They seems to be pretty laid back. And they totally don't go for the whole celibacy thing, already. They also don't mind women or gay people and shy aware from all that stodgy Latin crap. So go figure.

"God granted the Pope the Divine right on Earth to secretly control the population of every country through education, politics, economics, and military might."

Which is why the biggest superpowers of the Medieval era were the Arabic and Chinese empires. Then again, Alberto blames the Jesuits for Islam too (Again, not a joke).

Getting chewed out by a teacher is being "almost destroyed?" Alberto must be seriously emotionally fragile.

Well Alberto, that's because "Peter" is a moniker that did not exist in the early days of Christianity. Simon's original nickname was the Aramaic "Cepha", which really does mean "Rock". This was localized to the Greek "Petros" and the Latin "Petrus", which as time went on became "Peter". As for the "Satan" quote, the context of the previous passage features Peter telling Jesus that he's worried about this idea, causing Jesus to snap at him. I'd like to say I'm a robust scholar when it comes to literature and mythology... but these arguments are pretty darn old, since debates on this passage have been occurring since the 5th century so I'm pretty sure a high-ranking Vatican educator would be well versed in them. But of course, we can't expect a rational debate from a Chick comic, so we get the usual angry strawman.

Is there really anyone who needs to be told the definition of a heretic in a footnote? Seriously.

Funny. Most of the Catholics I've spoken to either calmly explain their stances or shrug and admit they're not an expert on the subject and just have faith. I can't say I've ever encountered one who tells me that I'm asking dangerous questions. Well, unless the questions are about the annual Choir Boy retreat.

Isn't this the same "rector" who got all up in Alberto's shit for not letting the kid in the pink nightgown get all jiggy with him? Was he doing that because he thought that not to would be dangerous as well?

Actually Alberto, that's not true. There is no concrete evidence to suggest reading in the dark like that ruins your eyes. You just have shitty eyesight.

Can't expect them to have any basic scientific knowledge, you know.

Speaking of shitty eyesight, why does Fred Carter constantly draw Alberto to look like Gilbert Gottfried high on weed?

Why are there two bodies under the covers?

Yeah, what the hell is he doing under there. And "gulp"? Shocking indeed.

And now he hates Protestants. Make up your damn mind your flip-flopping bastard!

Uh... I'm pretty sure the Vatican's main stance on the Inquisition is "Okay sorry, we fucked up there." and not " No this is totally justified!"

Best kept secret. Not the JFK assassination. Not J. Edgar Hoover's secret files. Not Area 51. The Jesuits. Full stop.

And he feels the need to provide a note for authority (right or power). I get the feeling the intended audience of this thing are most familiar with the concept.

Fun fact: There is no evidence suggesting this story actually happened. Outside of a few references found in Christian apologetic books and websites (All of which seem to have gotten their information from Alberto's claims) I haven't been able to find any records of a Dona Isabela being executed by the Inquisition in 1559. Seems like the trial and execution of a cousin to the friggin' King of Spain would be something that they'd have written down in great detail. It's not like there was any shortage of IRL examples of the Inquisition's barbarity, Alberto is just that damn devoted to the lie.

She seems awfully calm for someone actively IN LABOR! I think the term you are looking for is "with child." Chick does know where babies come from, right?

That weird neck thing the dude is wearing in the first panel always reminds me of that shitty movie "Wild Wild West."

Yeah, as much as the Evangelicals like to play the Martyr Card to satisfy their persecution complex, the real Spanish Inquisition was mostly targeted towards Jews and Muslims. When this wasn't the case, it would usually be a target for political reasons. Chances are she was carrying the King's bastard child or something like that, that is if this incident actually happened.

Catholics believe in "God." The Inquisition believed in "God." Nothing she is saying strikes me as particularly heretical and definitely doesn't make me think "witchcraft." You're stretching.

The again, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, so who can say.

Sharp cloth torture? Yeah, outside of biblical sites recounting Alberto's story, there is no evidence of the Inquisition using this method. There was a similar technique, but the goal of it wasn't to shove the cloth down their throat to lacerate it, it was to give them the sensation of drowning. This was because the Inquisition was (officially speaking) forbidden from shedding blood, and would go out of their way to bypass this rule and exploit any loopholes. Also, it's kinda hard to get a confession out of a target when they're choking on their own blood.

Yeah, waterboarding has been in the news quite a bit in the last ten years or so. You aren't going to fool anyone with this.

Or maybe Alberto is trying to say he has secret Jesuit Knowledge™ that the history books just won't tell you!

Real Historical Fact: Nothing indicates that Philip II had a cousin executed by the Inquisition at all.

Isabella the First of Castile was related to Philip I and brought crime to a new low in her region. She died in 1504 (not 1559) from unspecified illness (not execution).

Yep, you read that right. Alberto actually claimed that the Jesuits have infiltrated every major church in order to sabotage them from within. So the next time you hear about Ted Haggard snorting coke off a rentboy's ass, Kent Hovind cooking the books, or Jim Jones staging a mass suicide, it was ALL THE WORK OF JESUIT SLEEPER AGENTS.

I really have a hard time believing any religious order would have the money to pull off something like this.

A secret police within the Spanish Government? Somewhat true, though once again this was more of a feature of the Franco Regime rather than a long-standing Catholic conspiracy.

And the Hitler Regime. And the Stalin Regime. It's kind of what fascists do.

Heh. I imagine if Alberto were alive today, he'd be bitching about how women always put him in the "friendzone" despite his basic grasp of manners. Though I can't imagine many women being able to resist a bouquet of lollipops.

Oh yeah, Al here is quite the looker. Be still my beating heart...

Yeah, sure. You got your name featured in the Spanish newspapers at the age of 17. I'm sure the Jesuit secret police worked very hard to purge it from public record since, y'know, no one can find the papers in question. I do like the expression on the Green Shirt Guy though, I had the same face the first time I read Dick Haefer's stuff.

Were "heretics" actually listed by name in the newspaper? That seems rather inefficient, expensive and time consuming to me.

The names of every Protestant minister and church goer? Yeah, I'm sure the computers of 1979 had the processing power and storage space for that.

The computer I had in 1994 didn't have a hard drive. You just swapped out these huge floppy disks. Wristwatches have more power than that these days.

"Yes, it won't be long now." Over 35 years since and the clock is still ticking.

Says the man in 1979. This is getting old.

Implications of a devil woman ruining the lives of innocent men because they can get away with false rape accusations? Jesus, Alberto was ahead of his time in all the wrong ways.

Fred Carter seems to be able to only draw one seductive woman.

AHHHH!!! TEXT WALL!!!

'nuff said.

Yeah, I'm sure the Vatican has the power to bump off anyone in the world at any given point. Christ, the 9/11 truthers would tell Alberto he's being too paranoid!

His face here just seems to scream "I believe you have my stapler."

Y'know, this Costa Rican church has an awful lot of white people...

There's the same woman again. And this time she has the same hairdo as Gloria from "Marriage Mess." All these comics run together after a while.

If Carmen was able to seduce 17 boys and have them expelled, why didn't they just expel her? Oh right, because Women can get away with lying about these things. *rolls eyes* Alberto was born too soon, he should have partnered up with Jack Elam.

And there's Frank Miller without the facial hair. This IS "Marriage Mess"!

Wow, once again Chick's made the black guy into a gibbering idiot. Alberto just told him that the plan was to discredit the church by destroying its reputation, sex scandals tend to do that. Though I question the logic of only using two women and one man for this so called master plan.

Jack Chick clearly thinks all women are Jezebels, so it's really telling that isn't where Jim's mind goes first.

As much as this hurts me to say it, Alberto's right. Purgatory isn't in the Bible, it was invented by the Catholic church centuries after Christ died. But I will argue that Chick's own theology is an even more powerful and despicable brainwashing tool, since it lets murderers and thieves get into heaven so long as they make a deathbed conversion.

Why did they break Alberto's speech bubble into three parts in Panel 2? They do this quite a bit in both the tracts and comics but it never seems to make any sense.

I like how Alberto calls mass a "Beautiful Invention" despite all the venom and mudslinging he spouts against Catholicism.

Jim doesn't know what mass is? I think there are uncontacted tribes in the Congo that know what mass is.

Actually, the Catholic Church's veneration of Mary doesn't run as deep as Alberto and Chick would like. Officially speaking, the Vatican has made it clear that Mary worship is analogously worship towards God. Honestly, it makes just about as much sense as honouring a certain Carpenter for being the Avatar of your God.

I like how indignant Jesus looks in the first panel. He is NOT going to pay a lot for this muffler!

Funny, that's the exact same passage many Catholics use to justify their exaltation of Mary. Note how Jesus effectively declares Mary the mother of his disciple, this is frequently interpreted as Jesus stating that she is in effect the "mother of all", and all Alberto can focus on is the use of one word. It's a little disrespectful to call ones mom "woman", but it's not like the Bible has a history of showing women respect.

"Man, no real Christian would buy that!" 1.2 Billion people apparently did.

Now they're asking about immaculate conception. They know plenty about the occult but absolute jack shit about the beliefs of other strains of Christianity. Or their own for that matter.

Unlike your system which requires you to spend all your hard earned money on cheap paper comics. *Smirks*

How do YOU know that a Roman Catholic doesn't have Jesus in his heart (presuming Jesus is real). If he says it, who's to say he doesn't mean it?

Wait a second Alberto, you said this ID was issued in 1967? Odd, because he had been in the US since at least 1965, when he had a warrant for his arrest issued in New Jersey. Plus, his earlier accounts listed him leaving the church in 1952. Fact checking, yo!

He kind of looks like Eli Roth in that picture.

If you were hoping to ordain Alberto into your secret order, then why did you teach him to villainize your friggin' organization!!?!

A black mass? I find that very hard to believe. Are we just calling a standard Catholic mass a "black mass" now?

Holy shit... you need a foot note for "corruption?" Is your audience functionally illiterate?

I'm just going to put the "Citation needed" here, I have a feeling we're going to need it very soon.

This is Aldolfo Nicolas, the so-called Black Pope. Does that look like an evil genius to you?

*Inhales deeply* Remember when I alluded to Alberto's special brand of insanity? Well, here we are, the proverbial mother lode of insane conspiracy theories. Take a moment to breathe this all in, because attempting to process the sheer  magnitude of the  paranoid lunacy all at once will most likely cause your head to explode. *Inhales again* Okay... according to Alberto, the secret Jesuit NWO plot is behind; The Church of Latter Day Saints, Islam, The Jehovah's Witnesses, The Orthodox Christian Churches, Buddhism, Eastern Faiths, The Communist Party, The Socialist Party, Labor Unions, The Free Masons and Judaism in general.

There is no way we can possibly deconstruct everything wrong with this claim. So here's the meat of the issue: If these organizations are all under Jesuit control, why are they so prone to squabbling amongst each other? More than half of these are faiths of not only contradictory interpretations of the same Holy text, but also faiths sprung from completely different roots. Hell, the Muslims and the Jews are already at each others throats over in Israel, Atheism is outright illegal in nations such as Algeria, and in Saudi Arabia it's a literal stoning offense. So yeah, your whole conspiracy Alberto, relies on the assumption that one particular church can quell centuries of discrimination and conflict. I don't think the Flat Earth Society has this much concentrated bullshit in their entire organization.

"The great whore of Revelations 17 is the Roman Catholic System." Funny how he dropped the whole "Babylon" aspect of the "Whore of Babylon". Two completely different Civilizations whose heyday occurred in different eras of history, centralized in completely different Geographic locations. For this particular prophecy to occur, this Unified Church would need to spring out of Iraq. Good luck with that.

Alberto was apparently in Guatemala in 1966. Why do I get the feeling he drew up this conspiracy theory as one big elaborate alibi to escape his charges of real estate fraud? Oh right, because that's exactly what he did. 50,000 absent eyewitnesses and a lengthy criminal record in the US, you'd have to be a colossal idiot of epic proportions to buy this tripe. Ergo; Jack Chick and Fred Carter.

And now a foot note for "unpardonable." I'm started to get offended on behalf of Chick's audiences.

Jack Chick's incompetence is truly boundless when can somehow manage to misspell the word "Oh".

Now being committed to a mental hospital. THAT I can believe Rivera actually experienced.

Heresy through insanity!? Filthy Khorne worshipper!!!!

Why would you be declared a heretic via insanity? You can't even be executed for murder if you are deemed insane.

Yep, you read that correctly. Alberto claims he was hooked up to an iron lung after ending up on the verge of death via a bladder infection, only for Jesus Christ to speak to him personally and magically heal all his wounds. I never thought I'd say this, but Tim Todd's claims of being resuscitated in the hospital after OD'ing (twice) suddenly seem believable.

How is being told that belief will heal you any different than preaching it will make you rich? Neither is very ethical.

Damn it, another proselytizing section and I'm fresh out of humourous dismissals!

This is pretty cardboard, but there's the trademark suffering Jesus Chick is so fond of including in all of his tracts.

Why would they release him? Wouldn't they just plant a bullet in his head since he's being such a thorn in their side? Alberto could have just as easily said he broke out, it wouldn't be the most outlandish thing he's said.

Would have helped everyone if that guy really had gotten the straightjacket.

Wait a dang minute, isn't that the same guy who gave his mother her last rites, lectured him for refusing the homosexual advances of his roommate, and told him to be quiet about the whole Peter is the rock passage? Either this guy's some kind of ageless doubting Thomas or Fred Carter has no idea how to draw men who aren't well muscled adonis'. Experience tells me it's probably the latter.

Fred's inability to distinguish his characters is seriously confusing to the plot.

Forty cents in his pocket, a fraudulent check book, and a collection of phony real estate deeds. The rest, as they say, is history.

Is it Baal worship or masonic Baphomet worship? Make up your mind!

Gotta love these questionnaires, especially that VERY specific anti-Catholic prayer for salvation.

This picture of Alberto's mom doesn't look at all how she was depicted in the panels above. Is this more true to life or are they?

Sure, Alberto put his life on the line for the sake of our souls. I'm sure it had nothing to do with all the money Chick ministries threw his way.

That's some good marketing. "Satan doesn't want you to buy this book. So if you don't it means you're a FILTHY, NO GOOD SATAN WORSHIPPER!!!"

Reverse psychology anyone?

Well, that was the first installment of the "Alberto" series, and it is just as gloriously insane as we'd hoped. In a strange way, I wish he were still around to comment on the recent state of the world. One can only imagine the shenanigans he'd get into surrounding our current Pope.