SID-AA-EEY, Thursday (UNN) — Pope Benedict XVI has attacked popular culture and consumerism in a formal address to tens of thousands of young Roman Catholics. "Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises," he told the crowd. "They should give the money to us, like in the old days."

The Vatican made a loss last year as the weaker dollar reduced the value of donations from the faithful in the United States, having made a total of 236.7m euros in 2007 compared with outgoings of 245.8m euros. "I suppose we could get back into selling indulgences," he suggested, having pioneered their use internally for priests who fucked children.

The pontiff highlighted drug and alcohol abuse as examples of modern woes, and hit out at television and the internet for promoting sex and violence as entertainment. "I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation explain that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely entertainment?" he said, after World Youth Day organisers had told those molested by priests to "stop dwelling in the past."

He spoke of "scars which mark the surface of our earth — erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption." It is understood there are presently only enough fragments of the True Cross circulating to build seven entire crucifixes, down from fourteen five hundred years ago.

The Vatican first revealed its accounts in 1981 under Pope John Paul II to challenge the prevailing idea that it was rich. For some reason this didn't convince anyone.

• Steve Jobs "Worship Me instead". Temple Of iSteve, July 17, 2008

• Bill Gates "No, me! Please!". Don't think of it as Hell, think of it as Bizarro Heaven, July 11, 2008

Thanks to _nicolai_ for the title.