Karl Rove and the Pope Plot!
So we're watching Fox News Sunday and there's Juan Williams on the panel of commentators (no transcript online) explaining what went on at the pope's funeral:

I don't think that you can make the argument that somehow President Bush was trying to pull himself away from this occasion. I think he thrust himself in the middle of the funeral quite directly to create an association between himself and the Catholic Church.
And I think it has, for him and for Karl Rove, some good political consequences down the road. And I think that's part of a political calculus that you saw play out here this week. Presidents don't usually go to these funerals. And I think this president made a very calculated decision.

We knew Rove had something to do with the pope's death! Der Spiegel describes an even crazier hypothesis:

Germany's highest ranking female member of parliament has a new theory: the US government set the Catholic pedophilia scandal in motion because it wanted to weaken an already frail pope. That's also why it made Poland its chief partner in the Iraq war: to make the Vatican look bad. . . .
It seems the U.S. had to do something to weaken the influence of the pope, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq. Vollmer finds it all very suspicious that after the war, "Poland was made a top occupying power in Iraq, naturally to weaken the pope's hinterland. Or how then, of all times, the campaign against the Catholic Church and the pedophilia was started, which was, of course, totally justified, but at this point in time was definitely a tit-for-tat response." Vollmer found it somehow strange that the US presidents traveled to the Vatican despite the "tough power struggles."

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