The pope been making hellraising comments. His latest observation, showing the kind of logic for which Catholics are reknowned, is that eliminating the threat to mankind from homosexuality is as important as tackling deforestation of the rainforests.

The Church should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.

Such a remark should anger ecologists every bit as much as it upsets the homosexual community. What could be a better way to save the rainforests than for the fast growing swarms who live near them to develop wrists too limp to weild a chainsaw? Does that pesky old spermophile really fail to grasp that all human seed is not sacred?