Dear Comrade Cardinals,

I love Catholics. I am about as Catholic as you can get without actually being Catholic. I almost became one a few years ago but my wife wouldn’t let me join the line for biscuits and wine. That’s what happens when you marry a heathen. Anyway, let us not talk of marriage. Work of the devil, it is.

The great news is that Christianity is booming in Africa thanks to a general worsening of socio-economic conditions, an increase in Western apathy and an uptick in civil strife. More than ever, people need to believe there is a reason for it all – that there is someone out there with a grand plan who, if they pray hard enough, will rescue them.

There is a God-sized hole in the Third World market and we’re damn well going to fill it. It’s good for us and good for them. Praise the lord and pass the collection plate.

I remember when pope Benedict became the first to resign in something like 700 years. That’s quite something. There aren’t many people who would voluntarily give up a cushy job for life. You only have to look at our civil service to know that.

Did he get a better offer? Something on an island in the Caribbean, perhaps? Saying a few Hail Marys at breakfast, drinking a few Bloody Marys at lunch, signing a couple of autographs, baptising drunk Australian girls and waggling his hips to a rootsy reggae beat at a laid-back beach bar is just what I need right now.

I was shocked to hear that Benedict had a pacemaker. I always thought that was for people whose hearts were scarred from years of drug abuse. On the other hand, the air in some parts of Rome is 50% nitrogen, 30% oxygen and 20% amyl nitrate.

Tell me honestly. Did he jump, or, like God’s banker Roberto Calvi who was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, was he pushed?

He said he was leaving of his own free will, but I wasn’t convinced. Zambia’s Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo married a Korean acupuncturist – in a Moonie wedding of all things – and soon after was “invited” to the Vatican for a bit of a chat with the lads. He was never the same after that.

You know what I find really funny, though? That the Vatican Bank – suspected of washing Sicilian mob money – is officially called the Institute for Works of Religion. We have a similar money laundering operation here in South Africa. It’s called the Ministry of Public Works.

There are a few changes I’d like to make when I get the top job. For a start, I will be upgrading the popemobile. If I have to drive around in a modified golf cart, I want it to be fitted with a twin-turbo V8 and Pirelli tyres.

I want to drive out into St Peter’s Square and have some kind of device that sprays holy water over the crowd while I do doughnuts around the Basilica.

I will also insist that priests get married, but only because I regard it as a form of penance. Maybe that will stop them from dipping into the altar boys.

I have seen the pope releasing white doves on occasion. I don’t know what their crime was, but I’m not a big supporter of early release programmes for any offender, whatever their species.

Instead of white doves, I think I will release white supremacists. Not into society, obviously, but perhaps into some sort of arena into which we could also release lions. When in Rome, right?

I will also lose the skullcap. It’s a bit gay for my liking. I was going to say Jewish but I would rather be accused of homophobia than anti-Semitism. The last thing I need is an angry Zionist squirting poison down my earhole while I’m asleep on a park bench.

And I will do away with Ash Wednesday. My friend Ted came around in the middle of the week with an ounce of Afghan black and it was surprisingly easy to give up all sorts of things for Lent after running that little number through the hubbly. So it will be Hash Wednesday from now on.

I didn’t really buy Benedict’s story that he was resigning because he was too frail for the job. You don’t need much strength to lead a billion Catholics. It’s not as if you have to put on your hiking boots and take them for long walks every weekend.

The flock will do whatever you tell them to do. When I am pope, I will sleep late and issue edicts from beneath the papal duvet.

By now, the Vatican should have nuclear weapons. How else are you going to attack the headquarters of Durex?

I will crack the whip, my friend. By the time I am finished, the Crusades will look like a stroll in the park.

Forget the homos and the hippies. I’m going Old Testament. I’m going after the eaters of pork, shellfish and leavened bread, the clean-shaven, the tattooed, the divorced, the wearers of blended fabrics, magicians and fortune-tellers, the uncircumcised, anyone who spills his seed on the ground, the players of football on Sundays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, bookies, people who worship or watch Idols and women who cook while menstruating.

By the time I’m done, the world will be a better place for all of us. Well, for the few who are left, anyway.

Some people seem to want the next pope to be an African. I understand the Vatican’s dilemma. The problem with an African pope is that he would be, well, not to put too fine a point on it, black. And you never know when these people might go back to burning witches and eating each other.

This is why I am an ideal candidate for the job. I am from Africa and yet I look like a European. How perfect is that?

Habemus Papam, bru!