We’re feeling pretty heartbroken right now, because a case of mistaken identity has resulted in one of the most gut-wrenching displays of grief we’ve ever seen: Pope Francis is having an emotional breakdown at the beach because he thinks the dead whale that got stranded there is God.
Man, he’s really fucked up about this.
It’s sad enough that a majestic sperm whale lost its life after washing ashore over the weekend, but the grim scene at this beach became exponentially more tragic this morning when Pope Francis happened to pass by and mistook the enormous, rotting cetacean for God. Francis was joyful at first, shouting “Look! God has come down from Heaven to give a blessing to us all! Hallelujah!” and laughing as he skipped across the sand toward the bloated carcass. However, his delight soon turned to panicked despair as he realized the whale was motionless and emitting a suffocating stench of decay, causing him to freeze up and whimper “Lord? What has been done to you? Please, Lord, this cannot be!” in a voice so harrowing that we felt like we’d been punched in the stomach when we heard it. He then let out a pitiful, anguished cry and added, “Yahweh, please, do not leave us! We are lost without you, O master—please, let me die instead!”
In the desperate hours since, the Pope’s tried just about everything to rouse the dead whale he thinks is God; performing mouth-to-mouth on its blowhole, shoulder-tackling the whale’s rib cage as CPR, even hastily consecrating a couple communion wafers and stuffing them inside the whale’s mouth in a pitiful last-ditch effort to revive it with some kind of miracle, but this thing’s clearly been dead for a couple days and isn’t coming back. The poor guy spent almost 45 minutes alternately begging for God not to leave him alone and telling God he still had to raise Jesus, all while pleading with the gathering throng of onlookers for someone to call God a flatbed truck-sized ambulance. After a while though, his voice finally became so blown-out and hoarse that he could only sob “No no no no no” while plaintively beating his rosary against the whale’s swollen, rubbery abdomen, snot pouring down his upper lip. .
Oof, no Pope ever wants to think he’s outlived the King of all creation!
As upsetting as this has all been, the undisputed low point came an hour ago when a flock of seagulls came by and started picking chunks of flesh off the carcass. Pope Francis flipped the fuck out, screeching “They’re eating my Lord!” and running around throwing rocks at birds in a hysterical frenzy. While he was able to make a few of them drop their strips of meat so he could pathetically try to press them back into the whale’s body, the carcass was simply too large for the Pope to adequately protect all of it at once, and believe us when we tell you that you don’t ever want to see a grown man think that seabirds are devouring his Almighty God. And though the Pope failed to drive them off entirely, he did manage to really paste a few of the birds, so now there are a handful of squawking, mortally wounded seagulls lying around too, as if this whole depressing shitshow wasn’t traumatic enough already.
Of course we know this whale carcass isn’t actually God, but the Pope’s intense sorrow is still very real, and it’s painful to see the normally jovial bishop of Rome reduced to such an absolute wreck. He’s just been staggering around the whale covered in tears and snot, clawing at his face and making this awful high-pitched bugle noise like a wounded elk. People have tried to tell him he’s got it all wrong, but it’s not like they can just call up God on the phone and have Him say “Relax dude, I’m fine!” At this point the Pope’s lying on the ground beside the whale with one of its flippers pulled over him like a blanket, and we’re hoping he’ll tire out and fall asleep ASAP, because some emergency response guys just showed up to cut the carcass into sections for disposal and we genuinely think the Pope might try to kill himself if he sees that.
Damn, you don’t have to be Catholic to feel for the Pope’s perceived loss. Here’s hoping Pope Francis is able to deal with his grief or realize that the dead whale is not actually God as quickly as possible!
