During his short primacy, the new pope, Francis has been enjoying something of a honeymoon with the world’s press. Even liberal commentators, largely previously hostile to the Vatican, have been lavishing praise on this new, Argentinian Bishop of Rome. In particular, his condemnation of predatory capitalism has played well with many previously sceptical observers, spiritual and secular alike. (Though a few US right-wingers have been dismissing the pontiff as a Marxist.) This Satanic cynic remains resolutely sceptical, however. Has it really taken the Vatican over 1500 years to reach that part of the Bible about camels and eyes of needles?…

In fairness, economics is hardly my strong suit, and I’d be willing to let this ride and see what Francis does next. But now he’s trespassed on my home territory, and I’m not happy about it…

Our story begins as, doubtless buoyed by his current widespread popularity, Pope Francis has decided to grasp the nastiest nettle currently facing the Catholic Church. I refer of course to its current status as the international HQ for institutionalised paedophilia. Not before time. Last February, the UN, no less, condemned the Vatican for sheltering paedophile clergymen. Yet, it’s difficult to disagree with anyone who’s proposing to take a tough line on child abuse, even if he heads an organisation with such a heinous record in that department, and the Pontiff has promised a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to the problem. “Sexual abuse is such an ugly crime… because a priest who does this betrays the body of the Lord,” he explained. “It is like a Satanic Mass…”

Whoa – hold on just a minute there Frank!

Sexual abuse is an ugly crime for many reasons. Betraying the body of the Lord – whatever the fuck that means in modern English – is not one of them. And, priests raping children is ‘like a Satanic Mass’? This is bullshit, pure and simple, and it’s pretty toxic bullshit to boot. I know a fair bit about Satanic Masses in their various manifestations one way and another. While there isn’t the space to go into any detail here, suffice it to say, that in none of the variety of popular variants to be found in history, modern occultism or pop culture, does child abuse figure. Sexuality – for sure – but adult sexuality, celebrating the ‘wickedness’ of eroticism devoid of Christian guilt, reveling in sex for pleasure rather than procreation while parodying the tyranny of superstition.

The whole ritualised paedophilia scenario is your bag, Pop Francis, and you can’t just offload it onto imaginary Satanic cults or demonic forces at a whim. It won’t wash.

Check out the eroticised infants to be found in Catholic iconography – from the endless succession of naked young messiahs in religious art, to the flocks of nude cherubs nesting in church buildings – combine it with strange ideas about celibacy and carnal sin, and you clearly have the basic recipe for the endemic child abuse found in your faith. The Satanic Ritual Abuse myth concocted by Christians in the 1970s and 80s is surely one of the clearest examples of projection to be found in modern social history. Satanism has nothing to do with it, and the more you try to scapegoat an imaginary other for the iniquities of your own organisation, the clearer it becomes that you have no real interest in confronting the cancer at Catholicism’s core.

The Pope has announced that he plans to meet victims of Catholic sexual abuse for a Mass at the Vatican next month. That sounds, erm, sort of crazy. A little like if the BBC suggested that the victims of the crimes being investigated by Operation Yew Tree convene to attend a relaunch of Top of the Pops. The things is, Your Holiness, that anyone raped by a priest is likely to harbour doubts about your organisation’s claims to represent divine virtue on earth. Particularly when said organisation compounded said crimes by responding to accusations by reflexively attempting to silence the victim and cradle the perpetrator.

Let’s get this one thing straight. Your job description – your sole raison d’être – is as direct human conduits for ultimate goodness. You need to be explaining how this fits with raping children. Yes, there are other paedophiles, but none of them draw a wage from an outfit whose only reason for existence is that they’re impossibly good people.

Pope Francis promises that his investigation will be thorough, and commentators are wondering whether it will extend beyond those clergy guilty of sex crimes to the bishops who helped cover them up. But why stop there? What about the cardinals who appointed such corrupt primates, aware one assumes, of their moral shortcomings? What, indeed, about the Vatican itself behind these cardinals? Just where does our root-and-branch reform end? How about the God that they insist is directly behind the elevation of the pontiffs who have presided over the suffering of so many young innocents?

Might Jehovah Himself have questions to answer? All those centuries back, did He ever ask the consent of Mary? How old was she when she was impregnated – sources suggest perhaps twelve or thirteen! Was Christ born of a divine sexual assault?

Asking awkward questions like that is what Satanism’s about, Francis, not the kind of squalid horrors hidden in the Vatican…