Tomorrow’s edition of the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano marks the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ “White Album” (released November 22, 1968) with this informal absolution:
“‘The Beatles are more famous than Jesus Christ’: the sentence pronounced by John Lennon, which provoked profound indignation above all in the United States, after so many years sounds merely like the boasting of a big youngster from the English working class grappling with unexpected success, after being raised on the myth of Elvis and rock’n’roll. And yet, to the talent of Lennon and the other three Beatles are owed some of the finest pages in modern pop music.”
Somewhere (though presumably not heaven) Lennon is smiling, his satisfaction marred only by the fact that the pope’s newspaper got his words slightly wrong. The actual quotation, an intensive 30-second Google search reveals, was: “We’re more popular than Jesus now.”