Innocents by Spiderboy

Historians concur that Pope Innocent the first
was a sainted man, and clearly not the worst.
The second too was godly, and in retrospect quite oddly,
since the later popes were very often cursed.

The blessed papal innocent that followed number two
(with no imagination numbered three)
was keen on forcing spikes into woeful sodomites,
and ensuring that beliefs should not be free.

Pope Innocent the fourth was inquisitive as well,
burning books and persecuting learned Jews.
Galileo was a chap that the clerics tried to cap,
but they failed to halt the progress of his views.

Five to seven were not great, but preceded number eight
whose behaviour was the strangest of the lot.
After sixteen bastard kids, with his body on the skids,
mothers’ milk became his favoured death-bed tot.

So remember boys and girls, when you kneel to pray in church,
that belief is more pernicious than a fact is,
and that some religious chaps wearing capes and pointy hats
may be innocent in name but not in practice.

© Spiderboy 2013