"...A bit like hearing Maria Callas sing 'Yes, We Have No Bananas'."

Diogenes on the Holy Father's visit to some country I don't live in:

"The speech itself was a hybrid, as such things tend to be, composed partly of the Talking Points the U.S. bishops must have communicated to the papal nuncio ahead of time...",

We can be pretty sure that it wasn't the bishops who wrote about "the eternal life which God promises in the age to come," and we can be positive it wasn't Benedict that coined the phrase "a safe environment that gives greater protection to young people"; the same is true of the expression "your efforts to heal and protect are bearing great fruit." In fact it hurts a little to hear the bishops' buzzwords -- as a kind of product-placement -- coming from the mouth of the theologically fastidious Benedict. To pilfer a line from Mark Steyn, it's "a bit like hearing Maria Callas sing 'Yes, We Have No Bananas'."