It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

In this most Cathaholic of towns, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are on Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation like Brown on Williamson.

For starters, the old Pontifox owns both front pages.

From there he gets Vatican-size chunks of the newshole – three full pages in each.

Not to mention his own editorial in each paper.

Herald:

The pope who resigned

In the end it wasn’t the Twitter account that made Pope Benedict XVI a truly 21st century pope. No, it was his decision to resign — a nearly unprecedented action — when he knew that age had robbed him of the ability to minister to his flock of 1.2 billion Catholics around the world.

“Strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me,” the 85-year-old pontiff wrote in the message announcing his decision.

Globe:

Benedict’s strict teachings defined an era in Catholicism

THROUGHOUT HIS nearly eight-year papacy, and for 25 years before that as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal officer, Pope Benedict XVI steered the Catholic Church away from the liberalizing reforms symbolized by the Vatican II conference of 1962. His strict interpretation of Catholic teachings led to a proportionally greater emphasis on the church’s opposition to birth control, abortion, and homosexuality. Meanwhile, the Vatican asserted tighter authority over church affairs, a reversal of the decentralizing trends of an earlier era.

These shifts in focus sometimes put the Vatican at odds with followers in the West; Benedict, in turn, expressed concern over the loss of faith among many Catholics in Western Europe and the United States . . .

But the Herald gets the Popeier-than-thou nod for also featuring an op-ed by Boston College professor of moral theology James T. Bretzke, and this Jerry Holbert cartoon:

Bingo.