Awww, the poor widdle pope's minions are pulling out all the stops to protect the leader of their cult from all those mean and vicious victims of child abuse. It's downright biblical, apparently:

The leader of the nation’s second-largest diocese urged his congregation to pray for the pope, saying he was suffering some of the same unjust accusations once faced by Jesus.

Totally true, and definitely worth the standing ovation New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan apparently got recently for making that statement in a sermon.

Now, I'm not much of a Christian scholar, but I clearly remember that section in Luke where Jesus is correctly accused of covering up child rape and repeated child abuse, and then Peter and the rest of his posse try to cover his ass. Righteous. This is just the same. Well, okay, maybe not, but it's totally like that time when the Nazis were after the Catholics:

Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller came under fire for a sermon on Saturday that appeared to compare critical media coverage of the abuse scandal in Germany to Nazi propaganda campaigns against the church.

Right. Media coverage of rampant, continued and deliberately concealed child abuse within the church = Nazis. Boy, how could it possible backfire and end as bad PR, having a German arch bishop compare the quest for justice by innocent victims of pedophilic priests with the Nazis? I mean, it's not like the Catholic church has a whole lot of goodwill left to lose, so why not slander those ungrateful little bastards while the going is good? One look at the opulent arrogance of the church, and you'd know they have no shame, but really -- this is not just shameless and tasteless, it's pretty embarrassing.

To paraphrase Robin Williams: at this point, the Vatican's best bet may be to wrap it up and go condo. Then the pope can retire somewhere with his some select pictures of his favorite altar boys and leave the rest of us alone.