[sinkspur]

Somehow all the popes from who knows when up to and including John XXIII didn't think it was very funny.

John XXIII never wore the Papal tiara after his installation, and Paul VI sold the wretched thing to get it out of the Vatican.

You've got a very strange reaction to the words "Liberty and Equality." We're not in 18th century France, my boy.

[royalcello]

Your contempt for the Catholic Church's long tradition of using beauty and splendor to inspire the faithful and lift their minds towards God is disgusting. I bet if you lived in 17th-century England you'd be fighting right alongside Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans, smashing statues, destroying golden sacred objects, and desecrating historic churches.

You've got a very strange reaction to the words "Liberty and Equality." We're not in 18th century France, my boy.

But the Pope when he used those words was in 21st-century France, where they are still understood to refer to the French Revolution.