The Pope’s sage advice to US Congress

including some potentially controversial statements that were later omitted from his actual address. These included:

Clarifying that while some biblical passages are metaphorical and speak to wider truths, Christ’s advice to his disciples in Luke 22:36 that ‘‘he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one’’ did not extend to the purchase of assault rifles on eBay.

Questioning some legislators’ plans to stop illegal immigrants by constructing a wall along the USMexico border, noting that it had already been tried in Jericho ‘‘and look how that turned out’’.

Emphasising that while it will always be difficult for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven, the task is even less likely to be achieved in a Cadillac XTS than in an Italian designed and built Fiat 500 (available now on easy terms at your local Fiat dealership).

Praising America’s popular culture of film and music, confiding that as a young man The Omen and The Exorcist ‘‘really put the wind up me’’, and saying that these days he makes peace with his critics by grooving to Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off on his iPod Classic.

Explaining that while there was not yet a verifiable link between global temperature rises and Hell’s burning lakes of fire and sulphur, the executives of polluting multinationals should consider curbing carbon emissions lest they find themselves getting ‘‘a little toasty later on’’.

Reaching out to presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the hope that some common understanding and empathy can be established based on both His Holiness and Mr Trump being routinely ridiculed for wearing extravagant and ridiculous headpieces.

Acknowledging that while an organisation ruled by old white men with a narrow blinkered world-view and a history of denying rights to women is always going to be slow to respond to change, the Republican Party really needs to get with the 21stcentury.

Beseeching Congress to abolish the death penalty, saying that it was something that the Catholic Church had ‘‘tried for a while but found counter-productive and had now drawn a line under’’.