We know that the new(ish) leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, believes that the earth is to be cherished and the pollution is a mortal sin, and now it looks like he’s putting his papal money where is holy mouth is by activating a new solar-power system at the Vatican which will account for twenty percent of the Holy See’s power by 2020.  It gives a whole new context to “receiving power from above.”

I’m sorry.  My dad wanted that in there, so he got it.  Blame him.  Anyhow, Reuters reports that the system is going to pretty massive:

The massive roof of the Vatican’s “Nervi Hall,” where popes hold general audiences and concerts are performed, has been covered with 2,400 photovoltaic panels — but they will not be visible from below, leaving the Vatican skyline unchanged…The system…will allow the 108-acre city-state to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by about 225,000 kilograms (225 tonnes) and save the equivalent of 80 tonnes of oil each year.

The decision to go solar is political and economic, as well as religious.  As you may or may not have figured out by now, Vatican City is somewhat land-locked.

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Last week, we mentioned that Pope Benedict XVI (that’s fancy for “The Sixteenth”) spoke out on the topic of climate change on his way to Australia.   Now that he’s made his way to Sydney, the Pope is continuing on that same topic, telling a crowd of over 140,000 that humans are destroying the earth through it’s “insatiable consumption.”

Speaking at a youth festival, the Pope stated, “Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption.”  The Vatican has also started purchasing carbon credits to offset the nation’s energy consumption in an effort to show in deed what the Pontiff states in word.

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Bill Maher has always been outspoken but when he decided to speak out about his feelings concerning the Catholic Church, many people were not pleased. Maher made comments in reference to the latest child abuse scandels connected with the church:

Maher said: “If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you ‘pope.’ “

After the backlash, Maher offered an apology on his April 18 show:

“So, on that score, you know what, my Catholic friends, I will never make the “pope is a Nazi” joke again. Because, you’re technically right, OK, and also because it distracts from the main point. And the main point I was making was that if the pope, instead of a religious figure, was the CEO of a chain of nationwide day care centers who had thousands of employees who had been caught molesting children and then covering it up, he would have been in jail. ” [Newsday]

I’ve always been a fan of Maher and in watching the clip (click to see it below the fold) I feel that folks might be overreacting

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