Much was made a couple of years back about the Christ imagery in the movie Superman Returns, which portrays the Man of Steel as the self-sacrificing savior of humanity.

Hard to believe that Pope Benedict would endorse such a comparison, but it turns out his newspaper does see redeeming value in the comic book tale.

Tomorrow’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano carries an article lauding the superhero as a practitioner of natural law, the common ethical principles accessible to all persons irrespective of religious belief.

“Superman is a superhero, not only and not so much because of his extraordinary powers,” writes Francesco D’Agostino (President of the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists), “but because he is endowed with a ‘natural’ propensity to do good in an absolutely disinterested way: he is in that respect an intrinsically Kantian hero, being indifferent even to gratitude and honors, which he eludes hiding his everyday life behind an impenetrable ‘private’ identity.”