Papal Bull [aka Re: House Of Card(Inal) S] Poem by Tony Jolley

A nine-year-old, for God's sake,
[yes, for God's sake]
Even less than a slip of a 'slip of a girl'
Reportedly, repeatedly raped
And now impregnated by a father-in-law
[what sort of 'father' and what sort of 'law'? ]
Dying from the twin lives growing inside her.
It would have been murder by life
Had she not lived for the tale to be told,
Saved by surgeon's scalpel and incision
Rather than a cardinal's holier-than-thou
[and wholly ineffectual]
Intercession.

Then the hell she's been spared is vented
Like a bitter spleen of vindictiveness
Upon and around her trauma recovery:
Cardinal Re backs the Archbishop of Recifé
[Re for 'repugnant', presumably]
Laying about him
With the well-honed weapons of his work
Excommunicating all and sundry in sight,
From any doctor who might have touched her
To a mother who sought only to save her;
Excluding, of course, the father-perpetrator-in-law
He, apparently, is not to be condemned so utterly and irrevocably
For the so-called 'sin of nature'
Which, so committed, would have otherwise slain her.

Sure as sperm fertilises egg, the cardinal's pontification
Is followed by a pope without equivocation
Wrapping his man in his 'cloak of infallibility'
As if we're too stupid to see through such insanity.

Did God create Adam & Eve, and maybe on the 8th Day,
After sober reflection, a remedy,
A sort of 'God's out-of-office' service:
An Earth-based 'papacy'
Blessed with inhuman infallibility?
No way. Not any God I could believe in anyway.

And who dares dare the wrath of the Almighty
In condemning any man to severance from sanctuary,
Excluded from a love bought by Love's crucifixion
Making shameful dilution of the power of resurrection?

To the grace of God commend the inconceivable,
But for God's sake don't give us all that Papal 'bull'.

--
Musing upon the story of a young Brazilian girl in the news
in March 2009 and the inhuman reaction of the catholic church
and cardinals to the saving of her life. If you can find it, listen to
Francis Cabrel's 'Les Cardinaux en Costume'.... in the same
vein as this poem... but you'll need some 5th form French!
--