Pope To Beautify Cardinal Newman

Hitler’s favourite gunner, Pope Benedict XVI, is to formally beautify Cardinal John Henry Newman later today, in the hope that God will be so taken by a layer of slap that he later promotes the academic Victorian prelate to full-blown sainthood, complete with halo and all the trimmings.

There, now God will definitely go for this

A necessary requirement before the Pope can apply the first layer of foundation, however, is that the recipient must be proven beyond a shadow of doubt to have performed a bona fide miracle.

Happily, despite his frequently-expressed scepticism concerning the existence of miracles, the Cardinal was nevertheless found to have performed one anyway – presumably in a posthumous change of heart – when an entirely unbiased Catholic deacon explained how a routine laminectomy operation on his back ten years ago had enabled him to walk in a miraculous way to his seminary classes on time. An equally neutral Catholic doctor confirmed that this typical outcome was indeed proof of divine intervention, pointing out that if the trainee deacon had not prayed to the Cardinal for a bit of God’s special magic he would almost certainly have been laid up in bed for an extra day or two, just to be on the safe side.

The Pope later confirmed the miracle with the traditional declaration of res contentus mihi (‘well, that’s good enough for me’), and began ordering the official paraphernalia of beautification from Boots - including a request for tips on which lippy would look best on a 120-year-old corpse.