A guy dressed in a (very bad) bishop's outfit wandered into St. Peter's Square, and got his picture taken with a genuine cardinal.
USA Today reports that Ralph Napierski, a German, slipped past security and passed himself off as "Basilius," of the non-existent Italian Orthodox Church. he had friends with him, dressed as priests, and managed to score a photo-op with a smiling Sergio Cardinal Sebastiani, former president of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs.
Napierski was escorted off the premises by some alert Swiss Guards. They pegged him for a phony, it seems, because his cassock was too short. (Let that be a lesson to us all: to the ankles, people!)
They might have been tipped off by the fact that he was wearing a hipster-size fedora instead of a zucchetto, and a street-vendor purple pashmina instead of a cincture.
Napierski's website is Grade-A eccentric. Setting aside his "Basilius" persona, he claims to be the bishop of a "Catholic order ... in union with Pope Benedict XVI" called (ahem!) Corpus Dei. In broken English, he lays out the purported lineage of his consecration, which come by way of a Vietnamese sedevacantist bishop named Ngo Dinh Thuc. Thuc really existed, and really performed some illicit episcopal ordinations; we have no idea whether Napierski has any genuine connection to this crowd, although it seems possible. As the Psalm says, "Loony calleth unto loony in the noise of thy cataracts."
In any case, when you scroll down, Napierski also identifies himself as "an inventor, hacker, and internet activist." This says it all, we think.
In related news: Father Guido Sarducci should be the next pope. Because the time has come.
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