The following piece is satire.

SAINT JOSEPH’S CATHEDRAL, SAN DIEGO — Bishop McElroy was beaming during a recent convocation of San Diego’s priests and administrators. He had gathered his flock to announce that the inexorable logic of divine grace was about to produce a progressive reintegration: the canonization of England’s King Henry VIII, who famously broke with the Catholic Church in 1534 when he declared himself “the Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England.”

McElroy himself — a champion of Francis’ emphasis on “the way of mercy and reinstatement” — would open the famously flirtatious king’s cause.

“Divorced and remarried Catholics need a champion, someone to whom they can look for understanding. Someone who understands their suffering, and who is willing to intercede on their behalf with Jesus Christ. King Henry understands. He should; he was married six times! And because he was both married and the Head of the Church, who knows, he may be able to plead their case more eloquently than even our own Pontiff, who is single.”

Full piece on page 14 of The San Diego Reader.