Being that you are next in line to the Almighty, I am neither going to be fresh nor will I try to economize the truth.

I will start by telling you that you are not my Pope. Nothing personal, your holiness. Everyone has just a primary Pope in a lifetime. Mine was your predecessor, Pope John Paul II. The primary Pope is usually the Pope that first captures anyone’s imagination. After that Pope, subsequent ones look like mere substitute Popes.

It does not help that I watched the papal conclave from outside as the Cardinals played the dice that saw you, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, emerge after the smoke as the 265th successor to St Peter on April 19, 2005. I had thought that the Catholic Church would do the right thing and change the world by making a cardinal from Africa or Latin America Pope. I had hoped that the Pope would come from amongst those people who still go to church.

Don’t worry about me, though. For many millions who did not know John Paul II, you will be their Pope. They will look up to you to change their world. They will line up the street, storm the stadium, kiss your hand, and hang on every word you say. Many will be your groupies. It is the nature of the business.

I write you today for one simply reason – Just like John Paul made his mark as an anti-communist crusader, your job is already cut out for you as an anti-Islamic fundamentalist crusader. You have no choice in the matter. I know you recognized it for I heard what you said at Regensbury University in September 2006, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

I must tell you that I was disappointed that you backed down when the heat came on.

Dear Holy Father, Christ, as you well know, was killed on the cross for preaching the truth. You, too, should be ready for the sacrifice that comes with wearing the pallium and riding in the Popemobile. Each time you blink, fidget, or back down, the terrorists win.

Many have called you the apostle of reason. Tell me, Holy Father, what is the reason behind Catholic doctrine that prohibits the use of contraception like condom while still opposed to abortion? In this age of AIDS and world over population, why are you not revising it? Do you know that on your hands is the blood of many who die daily from AIDS and poverty? Why do you back abstinence only education, denying millions of teens vital sex education knowledge when even your priests could not keep their vow of celibacy? Why are you opposed to gay marriage when most sex abuses involving Catholic priests point to gay lifestyle?

Where is the reason in all that, Holy Father?

Recently, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited you at the Vatican. He woke up, hopped into his jet and landed at the Vatican. When are you going to visit him in Mecca? He visited the mosque in Rome, when will there be a church in Mecca or anywhere in Saudi Arabia?

As crazy as he was, when Benito Mussolini was approached by a group of Arab ambassadors informing him of their desire to build a mosque in Rome, the fascist ruler said to them, “There will be a mosque in Rome, only when a Roman Catholic Church is permitted in Mecca.”

Welcome to America, your holiness. We await your message. And it is our sincere hope that you will listen to us too. For as the saying goes, Vox populi, vox dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God. If you don’t, the status quo will remain – you keep saying whatever you like and we keep doing whatever we like.

Or, as you put it in that holiness lamentation of yours:

Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego.