Freddy Gray

After almost a week of media breast-beating about the Philpott case, a creepy consensus is emerging over benefits for children. Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative backbencher, wants child benefit to be limited in future to a family's first two children. Lots of Tories agree. So does former Tony Blair speechwriter, Philip Collins. 'This would save £3.3 billion if it were applied to all recipients,' he writes in his Times column today. 'Many working people take the responsible view that, though they would love another child, they cannot afford it. Well, yes. No doubt out there is a degree of feckless fecundity among claimants, and that's a bad thing. We should not incentivise greedy people to have children just so they can have more cash.

Does being gay make you a better historian? ‘Immensely, immensely,’ says Diarmaid MacCulloch. ‘From a young age, four or five onwards, I began to realise that the world was not as it pretends to be, there are lots of other things there. You learn how to listen to what is being half-said or implied, and that’s a transferable skill.’ MacCulloch knows what he’s talking about. He’s Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford and one of Britain’s most distinguished living historians. In academic terms, he’s on a par with David Starkey, who also happens to be gay. Like Starkey, MacCulloch is a Tudor specialist who has branched into other areas and television work.

Haven't you heard? Today is the official launch of the People's Assembly, a grassroots movement to amplify 'progressive opinion' in the public square. Think Arab Spring, but for Brits who don't have quite as much to rage about. It's being launched by Owen Jones, Mark Steel, Caroline Lucas, and other such luminaries. The main thrust of their campaign seems to be against cuts. 'It’s springtime for opposition to the nightmare of austerity,' says Jones, deftly combining metaphors. 'The People’s Assembly offers the one thing missing from British politics: Hope.' Hope and change! Springtime! Who doesn't want that? The trouble is, I'm not so sure that actual people agree with the People's Assembly's founding premise.

So the new Pope was 'cosy with dictators', according to the papers. The only sources for that assertion seem to be Latin Americans left-wingers who are obviously and implacably hostile to the Catholic Church. The most damning 'evidence' appears to come from an anti-clerical conspiracy theorist called Horacio Verbitsky, who has alleged in a book called 'The Silence'  that the Catholic Church and Cardinal Bergoglio were complicit with the murderous military dictatorship during Argentina's 'dirty war'. One doesn't have to be a papist to regard all these hastily re-heated allegations as dubious. (But it helps.) The papers have dug up various other Latin Left 'activists' to attack the new Pope.

Some striking facts about Pope Francis. Fact one: the Cardinals have elected a 76-year-old with only one lung. This undermines the idea that Pope Benedict stepped aside so that a younger, dynamic CEO-style figure would take charge, someone who could handle the exhausting job of running the Church. Instead the Cardinals went for a man of great individual piety who has lived a long and holy life. Fact two: we have the first Jesuit Pope. Traditionally, the Jesuits have been seen as a potential rival power base to the papacy. Now they are the papacy. The Jesuits have been, in recent decades, associated with the left, even the wacky wing of the Catholic Church. Bergoglio is not -- let's be clear -- the sort of anti-tradition radical that Catholic trendies are praying for.

Some wag has gone around Rome putting up spoof 'Vota Turkson' posters. This is a reference to the Ghanian Cardinal Peter Turkson, who has been much-tipped to be the first black Pope. Turkson has a lot of support, it seems, and not all of it sardonic. Many Catholics say now is the time for an African Pope. And there's a sense that it might take someone from the developing world to knock the Roman Curia -- widely thought to be an arcane and corrupt body - into shape. But as I've written in this week's magazine, a number of Vatican insiders think that, far from being an outsider, the next Pope must be an Italian. Only an Italian, it's said, can understand and fix the complex problems within the Curia.

In a corner of the Sistine Chapel, below Michelangelo’s hell, is a door to the little chamber they call ‘the room of tears’. Some painter-decorators are in there, frantically doing the place up. That’s because, in a matter of days, a new Pope will be led into the room. According to tradition, at that moment, as he first contemplates the magnitude of his role, he will weep. A myth, you might think. But we can be sure that the next Supreme Pontiff — whoever he is — will have plenty to sob about. Since Benedict XVI’s resignation two weeks ago, each day seems to have brought yet more bad news. Scandal is swarming around the upcoming papal conclave like a Biblical plague.

A rather feverish mood around the Vatican today: La Repubblica’s sensational splash suggesting that Pope Benedict XVI was pushed out by a 'gay mafia' within the Church hierarchy has set Latin tongues wagging. Lurid whispers about sex and bribery abound. The theory - given wind by Benedict's Ash Wednesday statement that opposition ‘mars the face of the church’ - is that the Pope was so appalled by the findings of the top secret 300-page dossier he commissioned into the ‘Vatileaks’ scandal, he decided he couldn’t go on. It’s all rather intoxicatingly Italian, even if it sounds a bit too much like a pastiche to be true. More sober voices point out that journalism here is always incredibly hyperbolic and La Repubblica is on the wackier fringe.

It's got to be an African, hasn't it? That's what editors, including my esteemed boss, are saying across the country in response to Pope Benedict's shock resignation. And Fraser's right: a black conservative figure would make sense. It would perfectly represent the face of Catholicism in a globalised world. But there are good reasons to think that, far from being someone from the evangelically charged developing nations, the next Pontiff might be an American. Under Benedict, the power of America in the Holy See has increased dramatically. Vatican insiders even talk about the 'American moment' in Rome.

That's that then. Marriage will change, one way or another. Progress has won. Cue lots of right-on politicians talking about how proud they are to have ushered in such a historic reform. But what about the losing side? What should those Christians who believe that marriage must by definition be a union of man and woman do now? Accept and move on, I suppose. The best response is surely not to bleat on about a sinister 'Orwellian' state. But there's another way. Since the politicians have changed the meaning of a word for political gain, perhaps Christian leaders should play the same game. They could move the definitional posts again, ditch the word marriage and talk only about 'Holy Matrimony' instead? Sounds ludicrously old-fashioned, I know. But read me out.

Friday night in Jaffa, and it’s a party. Jaffa, to the south of Tel Aviv, is where the cool kids hang, apparently — think Dalston or the meatpacking district, and add radical chic. An Israeli-Russian dude in big ironic spectacles tells me that, not far from here, they filmed scenes for the second season of Homeland. ‘So you can see how edgy it is,’ he says. He’s being sarcastic. We’re in a nice big two-floor apartment. The crowd is a mix of British foreign correspondents grumbling about their salaries, good-looking Israelis, and anguished Yanks competing to be more pro-Palestinian than each other. (‘Off the record — OK? — but Israel is effectively a terrorist state that is systematically oppressing an entire people.