Pope flub

During the Pope's big press conference to the media and onlookers yesterday, he addressed the world in English, Italian, French, and German. No Espanol you may ask? Um yeah.

One Italian reported questioned if possibly the pope was "shy about his Spanish skills" or Vatican staffers made a "grave error" in preparing the Pope.

Another Latin reported noted "The Latin world is the most faithful and the pope didn't speak Spanish" (Spanish speakers make up the majority of the world's 1 billion Catholics).

An Archbishop told a reporter although "it would have been nice" for Benedict to speak in Spanish, staffers from the Vatican Secretary of State believed "the Spanish-speaking world would understand the Italian" version.

ATTN: Spanish speakers - can you really understand Italian? I know the romance languages are related and have lot of cognates and similar structure - but really? You can understand Italian? If so, I'm impressed with the Vatican's ability to minimize the length of the the Pope's message by limiting the number of languages he translates his message into. However, I have a feeling this is like saying "just say everything in Latin - English is based in Latin, I'm sure people will understand".

I say bad form Pope Ben.