Rome doesn’t deserve it

The Vatican paper bleated with undisguised glee about the ruins of Rome after the resignation of the mayor of the capital. Marino didnt jump, he was pushed by his own party, which as Marino says did everything short of planting cocaine in his pockets to get him out of office.  The question is why.  Is it because his antimafia stance has upset the real power behind the throne.  Probably – but not the mafia, its the vatican thats in a huff.  Marino is a liberal, and the men who mince in the Vatican cant be doing with his allowing civil unions in Rome, nor his treating of minorities as equals.  He also, horror of horrors, was a teeny weeny bit critical of the ‘Giubileo’.    Hard to believe that the mayor of a city would have the gall to complain, but Marino wasn’t over chuffed that tthe pope decided to have a Jubilee year for ‘misericordia’ without actually telling anyone, and just announced it about 6 months ago, giving the city of Rome less than a year to sort itself out.  Of course being the Vatican, it can do this, it can announce an invasion of millions of sect mad Christians without asking anyones permission and it can then go around threatening and bullying anyone who disagrees with it.   And this is the case of Marino, a democratically elected mayor who accepted the idea of a Giubileo without actually creaming his cassock over it.   Once the Vatican has taken 1 billion of taxpayers money annually without our say so, the government announced that for the Jubilee it would be handing over another 400 million to the Church to help them  sell yellow and white flags, and postcards of a winking Pope next year.    Thats 400 million euros handed over because Franky decided on the spur of the moment that it would be nice  to have a year long party.   Obviously without the forewarning, Rome hadnt thought to build new metro lines, organise huge public car parks, and so on, so there’s a bit of a scrabble on to accommodate the popegrims – and its all MArino’s fault. So he had to go.  Thats Italian democracy for you.  I have an idea to help the vatican on this one – there’s a nice papal palace in Avignon thats just waiting for someone to go and live there.  it worked before, its a shame not to give it another shot.