Wednesday 19 January 2011

Will the Vatican's Bad Boy Strategy work?

You have probably heard that the Vatican is in the throws of beatifying the last CEO of the multinational conglomerate, Pope John Paul #2.  It seems to me that, like the rest of entertainment industry, the Catholic Church needs to continually create new celebrities in order to reinforce the faithful and maintain and hopefully grow it's market share.  John Paul #2 was a consummate celebrity maker, beautifying some 1,340 celebs in his time - more than the sum of all of his predecessors since Pope Sixtus V#5.

And like any other celebrity industry (movies, music, sport, politics etc), they like to keep their celebrity-making pretty much in-house and under their control - which is presumably why they don't let outsiders verify John Paul #2's supposed miracle.

Of course, you don't really want too much scrutiny when, under the ex-CEO's watch, his Manager for Ireland at the Vatican wrote to Ireland's Catholic bishops urging them not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police and, it seems twice intervened and stopped attempts made by Irish bishops to defrock pedophile priests.

Like the sporting industry is learning - you need to be very careful about who you make a celebrity (think Favola, Henjak, Carey etc).  Or perhaps the Vatican have deliberately embarked on a Bad boys and the cult of celebrity strategy?

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