How can the Babylon Bee possibly compete with this stuff?

“Pope Abandons the Cross of Christ to Appease Muslims”.

On his visit to Malta last week, Popie ditched the traditional cross on the podium for a collection of recycled plastic bottles with red blobs, so as to avoid hurting the feelings of his Muslim audience and to highlight that “the sea is made of recycled plastic bottles, because there is more plastic than fish in our sea,” artistic director Carlo Schembri explained. “And the red blobs are life jackets — the lives of people lost at sea.”

Some observers weren’t impressed.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM PJ Media:

The fact that Francis’s shameful conduct took place in Malta is especially ironic, if not ominous, for Malta was the scene of one of the worst Islamic invasions of history, one worth remembering.

On May 18, 1565, Muslims, in the guise of Ottoman Turks, savagely besieged Malta. The defenders of that tiny island were led by the Knights of Saint John (formerly the Hospitallers).

The Ottomans proceeded to subject the tiny island to, at that time, history’s most sustained bombardment (some 130,000 cannonballs were fired in total). “I don’t know if the image of hell can describe the appalling battle,” wrote a contemporary. “… the fire, the heat, the continuous flames from the flamethrowers and fire hoops; the thick smoke, the stench, the disemboweled and mutilated corpses, the clash of arms, the groans, shouts, and cries, the roar of the guns … men wounding, killing, scrabbling, throwing one another back, falling and firing.”

The vastly outnumbered Knights of Christ fought tooth and nail. Many of them were ritually mutilated, their hearts and entrails pulled out to cries of “Allahu Akbar.” Afterwards — and speaking of the crucifix that Francis is ashamed of — the Muslim invaders mockingly nailed their bodies to crosses and set them adrift in the harbor.

Despite this, the Knights and Maltese defenders so persevered that months later, on Sept. 11, the Muslim invaders raised the siege and retreated.

Today, Islamic invasions of Europe continue, though under the guise of a “refugee crisis” — one that the head of the Catholic world is doing all he can to facilitate. Not in the name of Christianity, as evidenced by his abandonment of the cross, but supposed humanism, even as many migrants continue acting like their invading and conquering forbears, including by destroying the hated cross.