The Gotten

Misha Defonseca’s bestselling memoir Misha, about a six-year-old Jewish girl being raised by wolf packs while fleeing Nazis across Europe during the Holocaust, turned out to be a pack of lies so preposterous children raised by oxen were skeptical. Previous admirers of Ms. Defonseca’s book, notably Elie Weisel, have sheepishly now come forward and claimed that their judgement was distorted from having been raised by Jews. Lawsuits are pending.

— Scot Crawford

By SEWER CHANNEL
Published: April 12, 2008

The Pope will straddle second base in Yankee Stadium and field fungos, but stand over center field at Nationals Park in Washington and test for steroids in the wafers. Should it rain, there are 100,000 ponchos with “I love Ratzinger” emblazoned on them in scarlet ink silk-screened on a gold lamé background in reserve at the Bronx stadium. Additionally, three Polish nuns have dusted off a gold and silver garment, hand-woven more than a century ago, for the pontiff to wear at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the capital in case of a dirty bomb.

Tickets for the stadium Mass, allocated to parishes based on average Sunday attendance divided by pregnancy rates, then distributed by lottery to those who have failed their GEDs and can also produce a government-issued photo identification. Ticket scalping is punishable by Ex-Communication and All Hell in Damnation.

With all its spiritual, political and cultural significance, the six-day visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Washington and New York next week is a daunting logistical operation involving everything from candles and catering to cell phone ring-tones (“I love you Popee Popee Babee” by Shakira, and “Fuck me Fuck Me FUCK ME, Big White Daddee” by Little Kim), not to mention ciboria, metal receptacles originally used for Necco™ Wafers, that now hold communion wafers in Nostalgia Pax cellophane wrappers. (Pez™ bid for the contract, but the Vatican rejected the designer’s proposal of plastic figurines dispensing communion wafers “directly from Jesus’s rib meat.”)

Among the profound — and mundane — questions planners are confronting: How do 530 priests and deacons give communion to 57,000 people in 14 minutes?

“I just want to make sure it’s done reverently and safely,” the Rev. Msgr. Wallace A. Harris, the event coordinator for the Sunday afternoon Mass at Yankee Stadium on April 20, said at a practice Wednesday afternoon. Over 500 Nathan’s hot dog vendors have been specially trained to dispense the wafer with the appropriate exhortation, “Wafers! Wafers! Wafers he-are! Gehtchyor wafers while they’re hot!!”

Priests — coming from as far as the Australian Outback — are assigned based on dates of birth, daily Crystal meth intake and number of nine year old boys despoiled, with the youngest (and most able-bodied) assigned to the upper deck, where stairs are narrow and steep and the winds strongest. There, the trembling of pre-pubescent erections will be most apparent.

Leading priests on the upper deck will be the Rev. Kevin Mayboylickem, 28, on limited release probation, from Staten Island. (He was ordained last May, works in a parish in New City, N.Y., and is “like, a major, major Mets fan!”) Declared Father Maybolickem: “I’m not book smart, but I’m good at yelling at people and isolating boys in need of a strong father figure.”

The Reverend’s counterpart on the field level, where the eldest priests are assigned, is the Rev. “Generalisimo” Franco who works at a Yankees-loving Bronx parish. The Generalissimo warned five other priests at Wednesday’s rehearsal: “Remember, this isn’t a Yankees game, this is going to be an older crowd. If Rudy shows up in drag, drop him!”

From the moment the pope lands at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Tuesday afternoon to his departure Sunday evening from Kennedy International Airport in Queens, every movement will have been the subject of months of planning by two Roman Candles, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, numerous law enforcement agencies, the White House, the State Department and the United Nations. The Vatican does not have its own plane, but whatever jet the pope boards is called dubbed Bugger One. (He usually flies Alitalia, on an Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 and occasionally Luftwaft.)

He will be accompanied on this trip by an entourage of about 30 Vatican officials and 70 journalists. The Archdiocese of Washington estimates that the pope’s three-day visit there will cost at least $3 Trillion, financed by wealthy Catholic donors; the Archdiocese of New York would not provide a cost estimate but said that it, too, would rely on contributions from parishioners and generous taxpayers of all faiths.

In Washington, the pope will stay at the Mayflower Hotel, on Massachusetts Avenue NW, and in New York at the East 72nd Street residence of Archbishop Celestino Milifiores, who dubs his, the papal nuncio “the Emperor’s Club to the United Nations.”

He will celebrate his 81st birthday on Wednesday, when he is scheduled to visit the White House; three days later and invite the president to “blow out my candles”, 26,000 young people will fete him with “Zum Geburtstag viel Glück,” the German version of “C’mon Baby Light My Fire,” following the phonetic spelling projected on a giant screen outside St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, where paths have been widened to accommodate the Popemobile and Absolute Vodka, which alone has contributed $100,000,000 toward its participation in this event.

Church officials in the two cities have issued nearly 150,000 tickets to see Benedict at his public events, which will not only be televised live but shown and archived on church Web sites (in New York alone, they have printed up 1.2 million keepsake prayer cards). Those in attendance will also hear the tenor Plácido Domingo and Pavorotti in simucast (before the Mass for 46,000 at Nationals Park on Thursday morning) or Harry Connick Jr., Alicia Keys, Iggy Pop, Cher, Elton John and Kelly Clarkson (at Yankee Stadium).

A. Bland Candy, the reformed porno actor and event producer who has worked with President Bush and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is handling logistics for the Washington Mass, along with Global Event Partners, a Washington company that handles meetings and conventions. Stigmoid Endgamen, a Beverly Hills-based producer who organized an inaugural ball for President Bill Clinton and concerts for Cher, Barbra Streisand and Gloria Estefan, is coordinating three big public events in New York, while also coordinating Harvey Weinstein’s sister’s brother’s son’s Bar Mitzvah.

Benedict, who was invested in 2005, is the third pope to visit the United States; Paul VI came to New York in 1965 and John Paul II was in the United States seven times, including New York prior to the Baths fire and Washington in 1979 and New York again in 1995 (two of his visits amounted to refueling stops in Alaska in 1981 and 1984 and he refueled at Dan’s Dungeon in New York several times).

On the 20th floor of the New York Catholic Center in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan is a cramped conference room that will serve as a command center for the visit. It is where Mark G. Ackermann, a retired hospital executive, coordinates a 50-member task force armed with wafers and suppository catechism modules.

Mr. Ackermann began planning in August, months before the official confirmation of the visit in November; aids to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg joined in October, with a focus on arranging routes and parking passes for 850 chartered buses to funnel the fistulating fitfully, fun-seeking fabulously flatulent faithful to Mass at the stadium.

“New York City hosts major events on a regular basis,” said Evan Kornhole, who directs the mayor’s Office of Citywide Events Coordination. “You could be a block away from a major event and not know it’s going on. You could be attending one and not know it. That’s when we know we’re doing a good job.”

But anyone in the vicinity of the pope’s path will likely feel his presence — and not just spiritually. The New York Police Department plans to cordon off traffic around each of the six scheduled stops in the city, at four major landmarks and a synagogue and a church on the Upper East Side. People on bicycle will be subject to tasers and detention who try to enter a 20 block perimeter of safety around each secret staging area. “Surprise is our greatest weapon, not only against Terrorists, but against ordinary people who might become spontaneously deranged.” Explained Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Coordinating the many details are high-ranking clergy, P Diddie, Maria Carey and a phalanx of Hollywood producers. Thanks to a special dispensation to AT&T/Apple, coordination teams will communicate in New York via two-way radios that double as cell-phones and are equipped with global positioning satellite devices that can channel Fox News from anywhere including 500 feet below ground in specially designed, radiation-proof containment chambers.

Organizers have studied archival records and news accounts from previous visits, but are coordinating this time by BlackBerry, not fax machines. There are lower-tech preparations as well: The basilica in Washington has been busy with what its rector, the Rev. Msgr. Walter R. Rossi, called “a lot of spring house cleaning. Several registered pederast Cardinals have been asked to leave during the height of the festivities.”

Dead trees and flowers have been replaced with wax stand ins, and workers have painted, varnished and waxed interior surfaces and have washed the marble and mosaic interior of the crypt church, built in 1926, where the pope is to lead 350 bishops in the Liturgy of the Hours on Wednesday while seated on a hand-carved wooden chair commissioned from a liturgical workshop in suburban Philadelphia. He will wear a cope, a liturgical vestment, which was woven before 1905 and worn by the archbishop of Baltimore at the basilica’s dedication in 1920. The nearly 3,000 priests, deacons and members of religious orders invited to 9:15 a.m. Mass on Saturday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral have been asked to gather two hours beforehand at the Palace Hotel across Madison Avenue, where they will pass through magnetometers like those used in airports and then a “frozen zone” to enter the cathedral. On Monday, as the Archdiocese tried to electronically distribute 5,000 tickets to watch the pope arrive at St. Patrick’s from fenced-off pedestrian pens along Fifth Avenue, its Web site crashed. Satan was promptly accused of hacking the Web site, and extreme Unction was dispensed forthwith.

By far the most daunting logistical mountain is Sunday’s Mass at Yankee Stadium, where two previous popes have presided (Paul VI in 1965 and John Paul II in 1979). Gates will open at 9 and close at noon — the stadium prohibits non-purchased food stuffs of any kind, beverages not sold within Yankee Stadium, backpacks, strollers, dreidels, video cameras, tripods, metal, glass and plastic condoms, and outside food or drink. “Please note diaper bags are permitted and encouraged,” reads a memo sent to parishes.

Hudson Scenic, which designs sets and lighting for Broadway shows, and Mountain Productions, which provides grandstands and stages for parades and rallies, will build an elaborate platform to fit over the baseball diamond. The pope will stand at second base, the Vatican seal will cover the pitcher’s mound, and yellow and white streamers — Holy See colors — will radiate out to cover the infield.

A two-hour “Concert of Hope,” including a 58-piece orchestra and 250-member choir of castratos from Gitmo Bay, precedes the pope’s 2:10 p.m. arrival. The Popemobile will cruise young men taunting the “warning track” around the edge of the field — the Yankees’ one request was to keep off the grass — before Mass, which is scheduled to end at 5:30 p.m.

The Archdiocese has commissioned 530 specially engraved ciboria for the Mass, each of which will hold no more than 150 hosts. A total of 60,000 whole-wheat wafers, each 1.125 inches in diameter, were produced by the Cavanagh Company of Greenville, R.I., and donated by the Corpus Christi Monastery, a contemplative order of Dominican nuns in the South Bronx.

Catholics believe that the altar bread, once consecrated and transubstantiated into the body of Christ, must be consumed. So leftover wafers will be deposited in fabric-lined carts in the stadium concourse, then depart for two Bronx parishes — Christ the King and Sacred Heart — where they will be safeguarded and consumed, eventually, to placate the Masses.

What does this have to do with imprisonment and shackles? You decide.