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# Weekend Words: Pope
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-pope/
- Published: 2015-07-19T13:50:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:31:07.000Z
- Description: Last Sunday, Pope Francis wound up his eight-day, three-country tour of Latin America —home to the world’s largest Catholic population — where he called unfettered capitalism “the dung of the devil.”
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/07/pope.jpg)

Jacques-Louis David, “Nude study of Pope Pius VII” (1805), black crayon over graphite, 293 x 253 mm. Musée du Louvre, Paris (Image via Web Gallery of Art)

Last Sunday, Pope Francis wound up his eight-day, three-country tour of Latin America —home to the world’s largest Catholic population — where he called unfettered capitalism “the dung of the devil.”

> My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the pope.” Instead, I was a painter and I became Picasso.  
>  
> **—Pablo Picasso**

> Why should we take sex advice from the pope. If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t.  
>  
> **—George Bernard Shaw**

> I am an atheist, and if an atheist and the pope think the same things there must be something true. It’s as simple as that.  
>  
> **—Oriana Fallaci**

> Go ahead on now,  
> You’re getting in the way of things, Lord.  
> And please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go.  
> And Saint Pope Pius,  
> And Saint Aimee McPherson,  
> And big black Saint Becton,  
> Of the Consecrated Dime.  
> And step on the gas, Christ!  
> Move!  
> Don’t be so slow about movin’!  
> The world is mine from now on —  
> And nobody’s gonna sell ME  
> To a king, or a general,  
> Or a millionaire.  
>  
> **—Langston Hughes, “Goodbye Christ”**

> In a private audience, Pope Paul told me he had read the novel \[*The Power and the Glory*\] and liked it. “Parts of your novels will always offend some Catholics, but you should not bother.”  
>  
> **—Graham Greene**

> It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.  
>  
> **—Pope John XXIII**

> The pope smokes dope,  
> God gave him the grass.  
> The pope smokes dope,  
> He likes to smoke in mass.  
>  
> **—David Peel**

> The Devil beget darkness; darkness beget ignorance; ignorance beget error and his brethren; error beget free-will and presumption; free-will beget works; works beget forgetfulness of God; forgetfulness beget transgression; transgression beget superstition; superstition beget satisfaction; satisfaction beget the mass-offering; the mass-offering beget the priest; the priest beget unbelief; unbelief beget hypocrisy; hypocrisy beget traffic in offerings for gain; traffic in offerings for gain beget Purgatory; Purgatory beget the annual solemn vigils; the annual vigils beget church-livings; church-livings beget avarice; avarice beget swelling superfluity; swelling superfluity beget fullness; fullness beget rage; rage beget license; license beget empire and domination; domination beget pomp; pomp beget ambition; ambition beget simony; simony beget the pope and his brethren, about the time of the Babylonish captivity.  
>  
> **—Martin Luther**