Vatican 'forgives' John Lennon for Jesus remark

LONDON: The Vatican has forgiven late English singer John Lennon for saying four decades ago that the Beatles were "more popular" than Jesus Christ.

Lennon told a British newspaper in 1966 that he didn't know "which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity" -- a remark that led to public burnings of the Beatles' records in the United States Bible Belt.
 
But, 42 years on, the Vatican's official newspaper the 'L'Osservatore Romano' lauded the Beatles and said that Lennon had just been showing off.
 
"The talent of Lennon and the other Beatles gave us some of the best pages in modern pop music. After so many years it sounds merely like the boasting of an English working -class lad struggling to cope with unexpected success," the newspaper said in an editorial.
 
Only "snobs" would dismiss the band's songs, which had shown "an extraordinary resistance to the effects of time, providing inspiration for several generations of pop musicians," 'The Sunday Times' quoted the Vatican newspaper's editorial as saying.
 
In March 1966, Lennon told a journalist from the 'London Evening Standard': "Christianity will go. We're more popular than Jesus now -- I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
 
However, Lennon had later apologised at a press meet in Chicago, saying it was never meant to be a "lousy, anti- religious thing".