Kevin Barrett: Was Pope Benedict fired by the Knights of Malta?

Popes don't resign, they get fired. Sometimes they're "fired" by God, who has been known to dismiss them from this mortal coil. On other occasions, Satan, through one of his secret societies infesting the Vatican, slips the Pontiff one of those patented papal poisons. But Popes do not resign because they're getting old. If you believe that Papal Bull, I have a "we killed Bin Laden and threw him in the ocean" story to sell you. Noted Catholic scholar Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars magazine, could not contain himself when, in the lobby of Tehran's Parsian Hotel, he was confronted with the news. "But, but that's unprecedented!" Jones shouted. So why did Pope Benedict XVI really step down? Dr. Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, is no conspiracy theorist. He's the quasi official Vatican embedded journalist and commentator. So when Moynihan let slip a soupcon of skepticism about the "resigned due to old age" story, my ears pricked up and my hair stood on end. Moynihan points out in his latest journalistic encyclical that the Pope sure didn't like he needed to resign for health reasons: "I saw the Pope twice this week, once at a concert on Monday evening, where I was sitting about 20 yards away from him, and his General Audience on Wednesday. For a man of 85, he looked well, though he did seem tired." Why, pray tell, did he "seem tired"? What, precisely, was weighing on his infallible mind? Moynihan takes a guess: On Saturday, I intended a funeral Mass in St Peter's Basilica for a cardinal who died last week, Cardinal Giovanni Cheli. Pope Benedict was scheduled to attend , but at the very last minute, he cancelled his attendance. This was an indication to me already Saturday evening, that he was unusually tired, he had spent several hours that morning with the Order of the Knights of Malta. Normally, he would have been present at a cardinal's funeral. Monihan's typo "moonring" "my ring" is suggestive. The Pope's office is symbolized by the Ring of the Fisherman, which is ceremonially transferred when the papacy changes hands. Wikipedia, the Zionist authority on everything, explains: During the ceremony of a Papal Coronation, the Dean of the College of Cardinals slips the ring on the third finger of the new Pope's right hand. Upon a papal death, the ring was ceremonially broken in the presence of other cardinals by the Camerlengo, in order to prevent the sealing of backdated, forged documents during the intrer-regnum, or sede vacante. What a scurrilous bunch those papal hangers on must be! Moynihan's Freudian slip occurs in the sentence: This was an indication to me already Saturday evening, that he was unusually tired. He had spent several hours that morning with the Kinghts of Malta. The meeting exhausted him. So he resigned.