Don’t let my diabolical grin fool you; I love the Earth. (Photo by Sacha Fernandez.)
Pope Benedict is considered the Green Pope. This does not mean that his weird hat is green, though that would be really cool. It means that he cares about the environment, so even though he is the Pope and also kind of scary-looking, he does cool, Norcal-y stuff like harness solar power for electricity and sponsor reforestation projects. Most recently, he added an electric car to his fleet of vehicles, specifically a white Renault Kangoo.
The electric ride is not for all his Pope Trips. For that he has the popemobile, which is made by Mercedes Benz, and not green at all, though they are supposedly working on this. No, this white, silent, zippy little thing is just for jaunts around the gardens of the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. For example the other day he used it to get from the helipad on this property to his house. Um, God knows you just got off a helicopter, dude. He saw that.
Let’s not get all high and mighty about the hypocrisy here, though. He is trying. Plus, he’s the Pope, which means he has to field enough hypocrisy charges, many of them spanning centuries of history. Let’s just let him enjoy his electric runaround, while privately wishing he would just skydive out of the helicopter with James Bond like the queen did at the Olympics.
