So, whats up with the Pope then?

[Sysman]

Now the knives come out

Well serious allegations there...

[Mich the Tester]

They've just been talking about 'next pope' on the news - favourite is a Ghanaian - has there ever been a black pope before?

Quick googling shows three African popes, one a Berber, one from north Africa, one Roman 'from Africa', but none of them specifically referred to as 'Black'.

[mudskipper]

Quick googling shows three African popes, one a Berber, one from north Africa, one Roman 'from Africa', but none of them specifically referred to as 'Black'.

Ah, not news then. We'll wait for the first female pope to really make the headlines

[Mich the Tester]

QC

Now the knives come out

Well serious allegations there...

That guy's attack on the status of the Vatican as a 'make believe state' is just about as bigoted as what he's attacking. What other small countries does he call 'make believe'? Monaco? Liechtenstein? San Marino? Andorra? How big does a state have to be to gain the approval of His Highness Geoffrey Robertson QC?

[SimonMac]

They've just been talking about 'next pope' on the news - favourite is a Ghanaian - has there ever been a black pope before?

Well seeing as Jesus was Middle Eastern, the odds are he wasn't Aryan himself much to Hitlers derision.

[Mich the Tester]

Well seeing as Jesus was Middle Eastern, the odds are he wasn't Aryan himself much to Hitlers derision.

Yep, but Aryans were 'Indo-Iranian', so vaguely middle Eastern/near Asian until the term was twisted to mean 'white folk' in hte 19th century.

[Sysman]

That guy's attack on the status of the Vatican as a 'make believe state' is just about as bigoted as what he's attacking. What other small countries does he call 'make believe'? Monaco? Liechtenstein? San Marino? Andorra? How big does a state have to be to gain the approval of His Highness Geoffrey Robertson QC?

Good catch. I hadn't spotted the "QC" bit, nor that the guy has written a book on the subject.

There's a theme here. It's not the first time The Independent has let some bigoted crank loose on their pages.

Some other bigot writing in The Independent launched an attack on Switzerland a few years ago and it was easy to demolish his argument too.

At this point a link to Wiki: Geoffrey Robertson seems appropriate.

[Pondlife]

A black pope you say.

[DaveB]

Quick googling shows three African popes, one a Berber, one from north Africa, one Roman 'from Africa', but none of them specifically referred to as 'Black'.

They were all Pope in the very early years of the Church, 1-3rd centries AD and were effectivly given the title retrospectivly when the church started officially chronicaling papal history around the 5th century.

It is more likely that they were of what we think of as Mediterranian or Arabic origin as opposed to African. The Liber Pontificalis makes no specific reference to this other than their place of birth. North Africa (North of the Sahara) has never had a strong African population, being mainly arabic (Egyptian, Berber etc) and the influential families were all decendants of the Roman occupation or of Berber origin.

There has never been a Pope from outside of Europe or the Mediterrainan area.

[Doggy Styles]

There has never been a Pope from outside of Europe or the Mediterrainan area.

Apart from the Giant Alien Lizards, obviously.