Damian Thompson

On the first Saturday in February, the people of Rome awoke to find the city covered in peculiar posters depicting a scowling Pope Francis. Underneath were written the words: Ah, Francis, you have intervened in Congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals… but where is your mercy? The reference to mercy was a jibe that any Catholic could understand. Francis had just concluded his ‘Year of Mercy’, during which the church was instructed to reach out to sinners in a spirit of radical forgiveness. But it was also a year in which the Argentinian pontiff continued his policy of squashing his critics with theatrical contempt.

Every time I suggest on social media that the Queen is Britain's most inspiring Christian leader, there's a chorus of agreement – with Catholic voices among the loudest, interestingly. Churchgoers in this country have noticed that Her Majesty is quietly uncompromising about her beliefs; her Christmas message doesn't skate over the teaching that the infant Jesus is God incarnate: typically, it affirms it without qualification. But, as of this month, the Queen has been reigning for 65 years. Attention is inevitably focussing on the next Supreme Governor of the Church of England, presumably Prince Charles. And here the same people who recognise his mother as a Christian exemplar tend to roll their eyes.

The Knights of Malta – an ancient Catholic order that dates back to the crusades – have enjoyed the privileges of a sovereign state for 900 years. Last night the Order of Malta was effectively stripped of its sovereignty in what appears to be a brutal power-grab by the Vatican. Pope Francis has demanded and received the resignation of the Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing, a devoutly orthodox Englishman of (even his critics agree) unimpeachable orthodoxy and personal morality. The Vatican has now taken charge of the order while the knights search for a grand master acceptable to Francis.

On 2 January, the Vatican published a letter from Pope Francis to the world’s bishops in which he reminded them that they must show ‘zero tolerance’ towards child abuse. The next day, the American Week magazine published an article that told the story of ‘Don Mercedes’ — Fr Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest with a passion for expensive cars and underage boys. In 2012, Pope Benedict stripped Inzoli of his priestly faculties, effectively defrocking him. In 2014, however, they were restored to him — by Pope Francis, who warned him to stay away from minors. Then, finally, the Italian civil authorities caught up with this serial groper of teenagers in the confessional.

The bewildering influx of immigrants into London has had one effect that no one could have predicted 20 years ago: it's making our capital city religious again. We've noticed – but only up to a point. Islam is visible: the women in niqabs, the new mosques, the Halal butchers. But the transformation of Christianity in London is harder to spot. If you asked the average Londoner how many Sunday churchgoers in the city were black, I suspect he or she would be startled by the answer: about half of them. My guest on this week's Holy Smoke podcast is Ben Judah, whose knowledge of the demography of London was picked up by living in and among immigrant communities while researching his eye-opening book This is London.

Have you read what the Pope has just said about being sexually turned on by eating faeces? He wasn't talking about himself, let me quickly add: just human beings in general. They make him sound more like a desperately tasteless stand-up comedian than the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. I think the media have to be very clear, very transparent, and not fall into – no offence intended – the sickness of coprophilia, that is, always wanting to cover scandals, covering nasty things, even if they are true. And since people have a tendency towards the sickness of coprophagia, a lot of damage can be done. 'No offence intended.

Nazi-inspired conspiracy theories are gaining popularity among liberal Facebook users who think of themselves as 'spiritual but not religious'. That's the claim made by the Rev Ravi Holy, a Church of England vicar from Kent, in the new episode of the Spectator's Holy Smoke religion podcast. He's alarmed and depressed by the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that his own middle-class friends are trying to force on him. And it also awakens uncomfortable memories. As a young man, Ravi was a punk, an anarchist, a drug user – and a passionate conspiracy theorist who (unaware of the Nazi roots of some of his ideas) believed that the world was controlled by the Illuminati.

Cristina Odone, former editor of the Catholic Herald, is encouraged to receive Holy Communion in one Kensington parish but not allowed to do so in another. And she says Pope Francis has made her situation worse, by hinting – but only hinting – that Catholics like her, married to a divorced partner, can make up their own minds about receiving the sacrament. Speaking on the verge of tears, she explains her dilemma in our second Holy Smoke religion podcast, which asks: is the Catholic Church changing its line on divorce? What emerges from our very frank discussion, in which we're joined by the moral theologian Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, is the ghastly pastoral mess created by the Pope.