This Is Dangerous For This Man's Ego

People lining the streets, summit meetings with high-level dignitaries, open-air Masses and performing a mass ordination.... Cardinal Sepe makes his Papal Visit to Vietnam. Only problem is, he isn't the Pope.

"I salute my hosts... It is of high significance that this ordination ceremony here is taking place at the start of the Christmas season," Sepe said to enthusiastic cheers from the crowds.

It's actually the start of the Advent season, but you'll forgive His Eminence's Freudian slip -- the high-wattage exposure is his Christmas present, three weeks early.

To quote Sandro Magister on the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and his "career that knows no bounds":

[E]ven Propaganda is becoming too small for Sepe. His new goal is the secretariat of state. His new goal, but not his last: just look at the way he goes around the world dressed in white, among crowds that “greet me as if I were pope.”

PHOTO: AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam

-30-