replaced both blade and handle

It's not really a very good hat. It has that pompous twattishness common to all vaguely glans-like high-rise IMPORTANT hats. Bulbous headware bedecked with shiny-shiny jewel-pieces might have helped convince the cowed peasants of yore that the pope was Extremely Important and probably really was the chief earthly shepherd of all christians but (despite occasional moves to try and prevent the advancement of scientific knowledge) we now have access to tools such as psychology and can tell when someone's trying to create a certain impression with their clean, pure, gleaming white robes, chunky polished white popemobile and accoutrements such as the crozier, perhaps forgetting that whilst there is a certain appropriateness to the shepherd/flock analogy (skipping over the whole people-are-not-sheep issue for now) the purpose of the crook was to catch the leg of and immobilise a sheep in order to do something to it that the sheep might otherwise have resisted having done to it.

It's not a very practical hat. Like those daft bearskin things those people in London wear to stamp around in, when something becomes purely ceremonial in that attempting to do anything other than stand quite still and wave a bit (as opposed to conducting normal life and walking around a bit, inevitably eventually attempting to walk under a low tree-branch or through a normal-sized door) it's time to ditch it and start again. An office as old as that of pope is going to have a fair bit of associated regalia, any several of which would be enough to tell any onlookers at what they were looking on at. There's that dress thing he always wears for a start, especially when combined with the wee shrug thing which was probably covered by the tartan blanket as he went past. If he needs a wee blanket he probably needs a warmer hat, and whilst he was wearing the slightly-less-impractical-than-the-mitre skullcap thing whilst being trundled along if there was an Official Papal Beanie he'd have felt a lot cosier. The multipolis present were all wearing sensible and slightly practical (either the rain or sun can be kept out of the eyes, though the ears must get cold in winter) caps instead of the tit-helmets they used to have to wear all the time, even when chasing miscreants. They've moved slightly with the times (though looking at most of them today you'd think they still had the minimum height requirement) but the pope still, as everyone knows, wears a silly hat.

I've no idea what he's like as a person. Perhaps he's kind to animals. Maybe he gives generously to charity and never swore in front of his mother. He might not be personally responsible for all the ills perpetrated by his predecessors and their organisation and followers, but by accepting the silly hat and the dress and wearing the ring he's certainly not indicating that he doesn't wholeheartedly disagree with the whole catholic doctrine thing. He's going to bestow an imaginary honour on a long-dead bloke who is supposed to have cured someone's bad back from beyond the grave which is pretty much at the fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden level of delusion. All he'd need to do is either resign, saying it was too silly, or perhaps suggest that the whole claiming-miracles-on-behalf-of-dead-people business got a little out of hand during the reign of JPII and having more saints to choose from isn't going to stop particular saints being over-used if the number of schools all wanting to be named after St Ninian is anything to go by.

As the copious news-vomit imagery shows, he looks like a wee old man, shorter even than the stumpy DofE as they walked away from the aircraft, and it looked like the tartan blanket should have been draped over his knees. After trundling along the streets and meeting this other bloke from his church for a meal he was reportedly going for an afternoon nap, codger-style. He's not yet fallen asleep during a performance like his predecessor but the years (and noticeably the last five) appear to be minimising him, as years tend to. A wee old man, but a wee old man who could be doing a great deal to save people from ignorance but does not. Though isolated from the real world for most of his life the ready availability of channels of information retrieval and communication would allow him to expose his brain to what's really happening out there, complete with figures and proofs where applicable, if he chose to. Granted, it probably can't be very easy to manage and attempt to manoeuvre something as outdated as a religion through the modern outside world, but pretending the modern outside world isn't there isn't an indicator of a healthy mental state.

Whilst I'm quite annoyed that the man in the hat was invited to visit in a capacity he has no right to assume and that the people he's here for aren't paying for all the disruption as well as for their tickets to see him perform something outside they could probably see performed for free in their normal churches and that he and his high-ranking fellows are making some really stupid comments in relation to their visit and that demonstrating that one has thought rationally and logically about how oneself and the world came to be is apparently evil... I'm happy that my fellow citizens were permitted to gather holding their placards right next to the route (albeit near a very dense concentration of the police) and that, amidst the clapping, flag-waving and simpering pageantry, they were allowed to boo as the procession went past. As long as they know they're not entirely welcome. For a lot of people brought up to believe it's probably too late but maybe they'll hear the boos and see the banners and find a little bit of room in their heads for doubt.