Breaking: Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown Announces Retirement; Pope Benedict XVI Picks OC Native as Replacement

Heckuva job, Brownie!

​In a surprise announcement this morning, Catholic Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown announced he would retire at the end of the year.

"I have enjoyed my time in Orange County, but it is time to move on," the 73-year-old head of Orange County's 1.1 million Catholics announced in a brief statement. He was two years away from reaching the Vatican's mandatory 75-year-old retirement age for bishops.

Pope Benedict XVI wasted no time in announcing a replacement for Brown, whose 12-year tenure as the Orange bishop was marred by multiple sex-abuse cover-ups and civil settlements.

"We need someone who can cover up and apologize for pedophiles and their supporters as well as Tod did," the pontiff told the Weekly through a translator. "That's why it's my pleasure to announce Matthew Cunningham as the next bishop of Orange."

Cunningham, best known as Orange County's most prolific conservative blogger over at Red County, is renowned in church circles for releasing the names of sex-abuse victims and for being an ardent defender of Monsignor John Urell, who was the right-hand man for every bishop ever assigned to the Orange diocese when it came to clerical sex-abuse and finally suffered a nervous breakdown over it. "Man, what Cunningham did took balls--but to continue to assert he did nothing wrong in defending John?" said Benedict. "That's my type of bishop!"

Reminded that Cunningham has apologized again and again for his transgression, Benedict laughed. "Oh, we apologize and don't mean it all the time," His Holiness replied. "Cunningham continues to attend Mass, doesn't he? He never revealed where he got the unredacted deposition, right? If Cunningham is truly repentant, then I'm the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem."

In a separate announcement, the Vatican finally admitted Father Junipero Serra was a pendejo.