Vatican forgives John Lennon for "More popular than Jesus Christ" remark

Better late than never. The Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano finally forgave John Lennon's infamous 1966 claim that his band was "more popular than Jesus."

In a curious twist, the way-past-due change of heart and mind came on the 40th anniversary of The White Album's 1968 release. Look Vatican, we don't want to tell you how to do your job, but you might have wanted to forgive Lennon's statement in 2007, the 40th anniversary of The Beatles' epochal Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Sure, we'd argue that The White Album, which is really named The Beatles, is a more lasting classic than its globally influential predecessor. But you might want to consider the fact that Charles Manson misread the double-album as a code for an apocalyptic class and race war, George Harrison suggests "a damn good whacking" for "Pigs" in power, Lennon calls for "Revolution" not once but twice (that is, after he claims that "Happiness is a Warm Gun"), and McCartney kicks off the effort with a sex parody about Russian girls.

"The talent of Lennon and the other Beatles gave us some of the best pages in modern pop music," the Vatican mouthpiece argued, according to the UK's Telegraph, adding that only "snobs" would look down on the Fab Four at this stage of the immortality game. After all, L'Osservatore Romano concluded, The Beatles have indeed shown "an extraordinary resistance to the effects of time."

Time was indeed the essence of Lennon's comment. ""Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink," he blasphemed in 1966. "I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity."

Chick said that when the Beatles came to the United States, it didn't recover. See "Spellbound"