Moments after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that in the next Congress she will be “only a Congresswoman,” rumors circulated by our Chief Congressional Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, went viral, to the effect that Pelosi, a lifelong Catholic, would succeed Pope Francis.
“That’s preposterous,” exclaimed Cardinal James Francis Stafford, the former Archbishop of Denver and, in the Vatican, he was Major Penitentiary [sic], overseeing indulgences and the internal forum of the Church. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stafford.
“No woman born of man could possibly become Pope, or even a priest,” Stafford fulminated, regurgitating Catholic dogma.
Our Chief Theological Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Jim Bob Hobarto, was outraged that any clergyperson, whether Catholic or not, could hold the title of Penitentiary. Hobarto had insisted for years that the only function of a penitentiary was to incarcerate Donald Trump, the most egregious sinner ever to live in the White House, and Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, and any of their co-conspirators.
For her part, Pelosi said that she looks forward to turning over her Speaker's Gavel to Kevin McCarthy in January. “But the papal ferula, which I shall be carrying when I become Pope, is a much more powerful article, which I will use, as Pope, to save sinners all over the world, even Donald Trump.”
The ferula is the pastoral staff used by the Pope. It is a rod with a nob on top surmounted by a cross. See https://dbpedia.org/page/Papal_ferula.
“I really like it that there is a knob on top of the ferula,” Pelosi told ASR Smith, “since I live in San Francisco near the Nob Hill neighborhood. As you know, Nob Hill is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in my city, and, as devout Catholics, we rich people are devoted to serving the least and the lost.”