VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis today announced that he has approved the formation of a new sect of Catholic priests who will take as their guiding principles the work of the 19th century economist and philosopher Karl Marx. The pope, who himself has been accused of featly to Marxist ideology, said that while a Vatican-sanctioned group of socialist priests “might seem unusual,” there’s actually “nothing surprising about it at all,” since “Christianity and Marxism are essentially the same thing.”
A Vatican spokesman said that the new sect is currently recruiting members from the public as well as from other orders of priests, particularly “the Jesuits, who are basically all communists in disguise anyway.”
“These honorable men of the cloth will focus on addressing the social and economic injustices experienced by the poor and others alienated from the system—the outcasts if you will,” the spokesman said. “But they will also concern themselves with dialectical materialism, false consciousness, commodity fetishism, and surplus value—all which Jesus himself clearly cared about.”
The announcement came only a day after Francis drew attention for claiming that Marx “did not invent anything” and “stole all his best ideas from Christianity.”
“Don’t you remember that part in The Bible when Jesus says that religion is the opiate of the masses?” Francis asked. “Fun fact: that’s where Marx got that.”
“The communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. The poor are at the heart of the Gospel,” Francis said. “Marx even stole Jesus’ beard—could it be any more obvious?”
Francis, who hails from Argentina and has focused on the plight of the world’s poor much more than did his recent predecessors, has been accused of being a closet communist himself, but has denied those charges.
“No, I’m not a communist,” Francis responded recently when questioned by a reporter about his ideology. “Communists are liars, because they steal all our ideas and pretend to have come up with them all by themselves. So no, I’m not a liar. Lying is a venial sin, mind you.”
News that some priests will be openly identifying as Marxist has upset many Catholics, particularly in the United States. Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, said that it might be the “final straw.”
“That’s it,” Donahue said Monday. “We’ve been tolerating this pope for too long, and this time it’s just too much. As of today, I’m advising all Catholics to convert to Episcopalianism. Yeah, they might be a little cozier with the gays than I’d like, but at least they’re not socialists.”