‘The Repressor’ – the very name struck terror into the hearts of sinners across the globe! Many was the back street abortionist, stunned by a crucifix thrown, boomerang-style, by the Cassocked Crusader, who – as they were lead away by the authorities – asked the question: “Who was that masked Pope?” Now The Sleaze can exclusively reveal the true identity of the masked ecclesiastical crime fighter who, for the past quarter century, has been the scourge of heretics and progressives the world over: he was none other than the late Pope John Paul II! With ‘The Repressor’ having been notably absent from his usual vigilante duties for several months, the Vatican has finally been forced to concede that he and the late Pope were one and the same. “Whilst many suspected that the Holy Father was also ‘The Repressor ‘, we felt that to confirm this whilst it was public knowledge that he was gravely ill might encourage wrong doers around the world to believe that they could sin without fear of retribution,” explains Cardinal Harvey Grummet. “Although he tried hard in his last months to fulfil his duties, the Pontiff found it increasingly difficult to pursue international criminals – although that electric wheelchair of his had a surprising turn of speed!”
Indeed, it was whilst battling particularly dangerous super-villain, (who had been spotted peddling morally corrupting heresies to schoolchildren), that Pope John Paul II suffered the heart attack that was to prove the final straw for his frail frame. “It was perhaps unwise of him to leap from his wheelchair onto that escaping biology teacher – he already had him trapped in a blind alley,” says Grummet. “But the reckless advocacy of contraception and ‘sex education’ was something that always inflamed him! But that was his style – flamboyant and determined to literally crush evil right up until the end!” In his prime, ‘The Repressor’ cut a magnificent figure, clad in his skin-tight costume – a huge cross emblazoned across his chest – mask and cloak, the whole ensemble topped off with mitre-shaped cowl. Called from his ‘Pope Cave’ deep beneath the Vatican by the ‘Pope Signal’ (a huge flaming crucifix projected onto the night sky above St Peter’s), he would emerge in his Popemobile to fight the evils of contraception, women’s rights and non-doctrinal religious teachings. Whether burning down the studios of pornographers or beating errant catholic priests into doctrinal orthodoxy, all the religious accoutrements ‘The Repressor’ could possibly need were safely carried around his waist in his ‘Divinity Belt’. “It was all there – wafers and wine for emergency communions, scented candles for creating smokescreens, bladed throwing crucifixes, even bell, book and candle for exorcisms,” reminisces Grummet. “Mild-mannered religious hard-liner by day, fearless and heavily armed, costumed crime fighter by night! All good Catholics could sleep safe in their beds as long as Pope John Paul II was on the case!”
Indeed, the Vatican was so worried that news of John Paul’s demise could lead to mass outbreaks of homosexuality, masturbation and dangerous religious liberalism, they attempted to enlist puppet maestro Gerry Anderson, the man behind TV hits Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, in an attempt to cover-up the Pontiff’s death by stringing up his embalmed body so that it could be operated like a life-sized marionette. “It was a brilliant plan – his jaw was going to be wired up to a set of relays, so that it would open and close in time to a tape of his voice,” claims Grummet. “We might even have got away with it if Anderson hadn’t refused to participate!” Apparently, the veteran puppet master believed that traditional puppetry was too low-tech to convince modern audiences, who would be bound to see the strings. “He also reckoned that you can never get them to walk convincingly either,” opines Grummet. “He’s into CGI these days – no strings to ruin the illusion and they don’t walk like either they’ve crapped themselves or got a dose of the clap!” The Sleaze has learned that the Vatican had been highly impressed by the work that Anderson had allegedly done for the British government in maintaining the illusion that the Queen Mother was still alive for over ten years. “She actually died under highly embarrassing circumstances – she suffered a massive coronary whilst performing a gross sexual act involving a frozen chicken and a Peer of the Realm,” Grummet explains. “They originally only meant to keep the pretence up for a few weeks, until a more suitable ‘death’ could be arranged for her; but the puppet Queen Mother proved more popular than the live one, and easier to manage – she drank less and committed fewer sexual indiscretions with the servants!” The awkward puppet walk was not a problem with the aged royal – people assumed she either had arthritis or was drunk. Even when her strings became entangled and she collapsed, people just assumed it was just the onset of senility. “In the end they had to kill her off – she was over a hundred and bits kept falling off and having to be replaced with wood and plastic,” says Grummet. “They eventually called it a day when the only original bits left was her head and left thigh.”
With Gerry Anderson out of the picture, the Vatican had little choice but to admit the Pope’s death. “The only other alternative was the Jim Henson Muppet Workshop, but we’d already seen what a shitty job they’d done with all those old Soviet leaders during the Cold War! You could clearly see the wire rods moving their arms,” the cardinal told us, before admitting that the Vatican had tried to fake it themselves for a while. “Those last couple of appearances John Paul made on that balcony he was already dead; just look how stiff his movements were! Either rigor mortis was already setting in or we hadn’t thawed him out properly after getting him out of the freezer! In the end, all we could do was shove a stick up his ass and operate him like a glove puppet!”
However, the Vatican is now confident that it has a worthy successor to John Paul II, with Pope Benedict XVI due to make his crime fighting debut any day soon. “There’s going to be a new guy in town – ‘The Enforcer’! He’s going to be even tougher on heretics and queers than ‘The Repressor,” enthuses Grummet. “He’s already had plenty of experience, having already donned the tights on occasion as the ‘Boy Chorister’, sometime sidekick to ‘The Repressor’!” Despite Grummet’s enthusiasm, controversy is already gathering around the new masked Pope, with allegations that he wore his Hitler Youth uniform when working as the ‘Boy Chorister’. “Such claims are completely untrue,” says Grummet, who also denies that swastikas, coal scuttle helmets and jackboots will form any part of the new ecclesiastical superhero’s costume. “We must not allow such falsehoods to distract us from our central mission – turning back the forces of ‘progress’ and taking the world back to a golden age of religious, social and sexual orthodoxy!”
