papal service announcement

GWP offers this piece of insight to newly papified Benedict XVI in hopes of wiser decisions and a more tolerant attitude:

"So passed one of the most remarkable pontiffs in the history of the papacy, his (Pius XII) memory fragrant with esteem. Such was the reverential self-censorship surrounding his name and pontificate that it was to take severeal years for more candid accounts of the death and obsequies to reach a wider public. His death agony, for instance, had been photographed by his former doctor, Galeazzi-Lisi, and the pictures offered to various magazines. The good doctor, moreover, had taken charge of the embalming, experimenting with a new method and leaving the intestines in place; in consequence, the corpse began to rot immediately in the autumn heat. As the hearse paused outside St. John Lateran, a series of dreadful farts and eructations was heard to issue from the coffin, a result, apparently, of rapid fermentation. During the lying-in-state in St. Peter's, the dead Pope's face turned gray-green and then purple, and the stench was so overpowering that one of the attendant guards fainted. A final indignity, his nose went black and fell off before interment."

"Hitler's Pope, The Secret History of Pius XII"

John Cornwell