New Pope Firing All The Right People

From the Vatican, more news of Pope Francis I The Awesome:  New Pope has gone and fired the head of the Swiss Guard, reportedly because he "found the commander’s manner overly strict and Teutonic.'" So we've gone from having a pope who was anactual Hitlerjugend  to a pope who doesn't want any Grand Teutons in his Vatican. And what, according to Vatican scuttlebutt, precipitated the dismissal of Col. Daniel Anrig?

The 77-year-old Pope is said to have been appalled recently to have emerged one morning from his private suite of rooms to find that a Swiss Guard had been standing outside all night.

“Sit down,” he told the young guardsman, to which the soldier said: “I can’t, it’s against orders.”

The Pope replied: “I give the orders around here” — and promptly went off to buy a cappuccino for the exhausted soldier. In October, the Pope was photographed shaking hands with a member of the elite corps, breaking years of protocol which demanded that pontiffs should be aloof in their dealings with Swiss Guardsmen.

Pope Francis is reportedly planning to replace Col. Anrig with "his deputy, Christoph Graf, who is said to have a more paternalistic style of command." We aren't entirely sure what that means, exactly, but it presumably includes bringing them the occasional cuppa.

There are reportedly no plans at this time to replace the Guard's traditional uniforms with something less silly.

[ National Post ]