Imagine if Dick Cheney had become President right after Ronald Reagan left office, only with more elaborate hats, and you’d have a good idea of the uphill task that faced Pope Benedict XVI when he was tapped to replace one of the most beloved Popes in recent history, John Paul II, back in 2005.

True to the nickname “God’s Rottweiler” he earned back when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was calling liberation theology “a singular heresy” and declaring that gays possessed an “intrinsic moral evil”, Pope Benedict XVI has decided that the best way to follow in John Paul II’s footsteps is to piss everybody off.

So, who has the Pope managed to offend so far?

First in line to get angry, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, were Muslims.

Back in September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI thought it’d be a really good idea to make a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor:

When Muslims around the word expressed their outrage, Pope Benedict XVI claimed that the quote didn’t really express his personal thoughts about Islam, which is somewhat like yelling “Fuck you, you fucking fuck!” at a stranger and then saying they shouldn’t be angry since you were just quoting Blue Velvet.

Next stop on the “Fuck You, I’m The Pope” tour were the Jews.

Recently Pope Benedict XVI gave permission for Catholic churches to resume the use of the old-school Tridentine Mass. Also known as the Latin Mass, use of the Tridentine Mass had been widely restricted as part of the reforms and changes ushered in by the Second Vatican Council (or Vatican II: Electric Boogaloo). While the Pope’s edict relaxing those restrictions was first seen as merely a sop to conservative Catholic groups, Jewish groups pointed out that the modern version of Tridentine Mass, dating back to the mid-1960s, includes a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews to Christianity:

The response from the Pope? In a nutshell, “There’s nothing derogatory about that”. To be fair, he’s comparing it to the original 16th Century version:

So remember, it’s a gesture of ecumenical outreach to pray to God to convert Jews to Christianity, as long as you don’t call them names.

Having angered two out of the three major monotheistic Western religions, Pope Benedict XVI then went for the hat trick and took on other Christians.

To celebrate the Feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, Pope Benedict XVI revisited an old favorite topic and announced that all Protestant churches really aren’t churches at all because they lack a direct link to the Apostles and thus lack the “means of salvation”. He then gave a reluctant semi-shout out to the Eastern Orthodox Church, claiming that while it did technically count as a church and had “many elements of sanctification and of truth”, it was “wounded” (or “defective”, depending on how you translate your Latin) by not acknowledging the Pope’s authority, only not as "profoundly wounded" as Protestant churches were.

I guess it’s never too late to tell Martin Luther to piss up a rope.

Many observers, Catholic and otherwise, are worried that these are the first steps of Pope Benedict XVI attempting to turn the Catholic dogma clock back a century or two and undoing the reforms of Vatican II, especially when it comes to relations with other religions. Pope Benedict XVI claims that he’s merely clearing up “erroneous or ambiguous” liberal interpretations of Vatican II, and apparently his conservative views have helped increased both donations to the Catholic church and the number of pilgrims visiting the Vatican.

So if you belong to a religious faith that Pope Benedict XVI hasn’t insulted yet, you might want to send him a postcard and remind him.