Try lies as black as Hades, of the sort AFP indulges in. Here is the concluding sentence of one of its reports, which was carried in last Monday’s edition of The Times. “The Pope has used his trip to call on German Catholics to hammer home his ultra-conservative credo on a range of issues such as artificial contraception, abortion, euthanasia and gaymarriage.”

We had forgotten that these calm educated Libyan men exist, so complete was their removal from the periphery, never mind the centre, of power

It is well to point out that during his four-day state visit to Germany, Pope Benedict delivered some 18 speeches and homilies. He spoke with journalists on his flight to his homeland, addressed the Federal Parliament, met with representatives of the Jewish community and celebrated Mass at the Olympiastadion, met representatives of the Muslim community and the German Evangelical Church Council.

He participated in an ecumenical celebration, attended vespers and the next day celebrated Holy Mass at Domplatz in Erfurt, greeted citizens gathered at Munsterplatz, addressed seminarians in Freiburg, held a prayer vigil with young people, met with a group of Catholics active in the Church and society, also at Freiburg – a wicked schedule for an 84-year-old who never fails to surprise.

I made a point to visit the Vatican site where his speeches, homilies and addresses can be found, downloaded them and found not a single reference to contraception, abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage, nor the skimpiest sign of a hammer.

What I did find was an impassioned call to his “Dear Young Friends” to “Dare to be glowing saints” because, “You are the light of the world. Where God is, there is a future.” He reminded them of the existence of evil about which “we cannot remain silent”. And he spelt out that evil – “selfishness, envy, aggression... sloth, or laziness in willing and doing good... (The) damage to the Church comes not from her opponents, but from uncommitted Christians... Christ is not so much interested in how often in our lives we stumble and fall, as in how often with his help we pick ourselves up again.”

In Thuringia he reminded his audience in what was the former German Democratic Republic that they had “to endure first a brown and then a red dictatorship, which acted on the Christian faith like acid rain”.

He then returned to the theme for his visit: “Yet the last two decades have also brought good experiences; a broader horizon, an exchange that reaches beyond borders, a faithful confidence that God does not abandon us and that he leads us along new paths. Where there is God, there is a future.”

Checked his speech to lay Catholics in Freiburg – no sign of hammering. But he did take a swipe at “exaggerated individualism... People can hardly find the courage now to promise to be faithful for a whole lifetime... the real crisis facing the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith (without which) all structural reform will remain ineffective”.

And still no reference to the Big Four. So why do the media lie in so obscene and perverse a manner? For you can bet your bottom dollar that any newspaper that picked up that AFP report printed it tale quale if, that is, it deemed it necessary to carry it.

May have missed all that hammering, of course; I doubt it. Perhaps AFP’s reports on Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church should be treated with more circumspection and subjected to more scrutiny.

At last, recognition

The discussion on Libya organised by The Times, must have been an eye-opener for those who prefer to walk about with their eyes closed.

Taking part were the Prime Minister, the NTC spokesman for transport Mohamed Sayeh and the Libyan ambassador to Malta, Saadun Suayeh.

Lawrence Gonzi, whose handling of the situation to our south was impeccable throughoutthe critical six months of the Libyan uprising that saw theend of the Gaddafi regime, will have been chuffed by the positive reactions of the audience at the Intercontinental Hotel.

This ‘visionless’ and ‘incompetent’ man received the recognition he deserves for the political maturity and statesmanlike qualities he brought to a crisis that could have gone either way.

He decided early on that it would go the way it did and acted accordingly, while his opposition sniffed the air and hesitated.

On the plus side, Sayeh pointed out that serious problems over oil exploration Malta had with Gaddafi in the past (the regime unilaterally stopped any attempt at exploration using the simple method of sending a gunboat) would be resolved; more significant was Sayeh’s determination to “minimise” illegal immigration, a process that has placed such a strain on our resources.

When Gonzi recommended the need for the interim administration to sign international conventions and agreements to indicate to the world that a characteristic of the new Libya would be her respect for human rights and dignity, Sayeh swiftly pointed out that “we carried out this revolution to see humans live as humans”. It was all very civilised, a perfect example of what Libya missed as a country in the comity of nations. People like Sayeh had as much chance of contributing to the development of Libya after 1969 as Kerensky had to the process of democracy in Russia after 1917.

And yet the most striking feature of the new Libya and its new leaders, interim though these be, is the calm, educated tenor of their speech and behaviour. We had forgotten that these men exist, so complete was their removal from the periphery, never mind the centre, of power.

It augurs well for Libya. It augurs well for Malta. Not surprisingly, though, we soon had one or two self-promoting gurus who know everything about everything, dampening a situation between our two countries that has improved from foul to more than fair. Yes, feet on the ground but is it too much to ask whether we can cheer just once in a while?

Inevitably, the reckoning

Financial greed, banking irresponsibility, political incompetence, corporate corruption and the type of moral decay that brought the Roman Empire to its knees are here with a vengeance.

When the ‘market’ assumes a personality of its own; when we hear about “bad news being shrugged off by the markets”; when we read that the “markets are not liking what they heard” – and five, six, seven billion dollars are wiped off the stock market, three billion of which return to that same market after two or three days when the market hears something “it likes”, clearly, the world is in hock to Mammon.

And into Mammon’s voracious jaws, euros and dollars are emptied with a panache that trumpets the lie that there is no end to the euro and dollar supply.

There is talk of trillions of euros on stand-by; and having thrown in a trillion dollars into his first, and failed, stimulus plan, the President of the US recently decided he needed a further half a trillion spondulicks.

I loved the headline I came across the other day – ‘Stimulus Fatigue Stymies Obama in Finding Votes for Jobs Plan’; as well it might, for if a trillion dollars failed to bring unemployment down from a shave over nine per cent, why should half a trillion succeed?

Lecturing the Europeans earned Barack Obama no kudos in Germany where, a few short, long years ago, he was being lionised in Berlin.

Truth is, Obama rustled up a plan that was to serve as the opening salvo of his bid for re-election in 2012. This is why soon after he unveiled his ‘plan’ the President took to the road and kept urging the crowds he addressed to tell their congressmen, “Pass this Bill!”

His political adviser, David Axelrod, told Good Morning America that the administration was “not in a negotiation to break up thepackage” – which was not an “a la carte menu.”

This is the sort of fatal remark that sounds good and which did for the President’s Obamacare;for as sure as Obama presidesover the greatest deficit inAmerica’s history, the package will be broken up.

Many of my friends continue to salivate over Obama. Cussedly for them, this is in stark contrast to many of Obama’s friends in America. The latter believe that hope is drying up, audacity an eight-letter word; the former that it is all the fault of the dreadful Republicans and the even more revolting tea-party monsters who helped to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats last autumn and turfed Nancy Pelosi out from her powerful role as Speaker.

They managed that because by the autumn of 2010, Obama had simply not delivered and since then has delivered even less.

Those who keep insisting that this lack of delivery was due to Republican intransigence, to the GOP’s manic resistance to Obama’s rhetorical audacity, may do well to remind themselves that two years into his presidency, Bill Clinton faced a similar situation in the battle between the White House and Capitol Hill.

His uncanny ability to persuade his opponents into giving in a bit here, a bit there, sometimes quite a bit, kept his show firmly on the road and copied that of Ronald Reagan who charmed the pants off his opponents.

Obama has demonstrated neither political charm nor uncanny ability. Some call this a lack of leadership; others say it is an absence of experience; true, this void is almost without parallel in post-war America.

So one reads about Democrats yearning nostalgically for The Return of Hillary; worse, wondering whether their man is not a Carter – than which it is difficult to find a more deflating put-down.