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This play (111pg), "The Pope and the Witch," of leftist Italian playwright Dario Fo, mocks the pope and the vatican as a whole, and is, as with all of Fo's plays, hilarious. Fo portrays the pope as a insane, dogmatic idiot, which is the truth of course, and consistently criticizes the vatican's position on many things, among them: birth control (the lack of which, in line with the vatican's continuous condemning of them, leads to high amounts of orphans and helps to spread sexual diseases, the most dangerous being AIDS), and the immense, obscene wealth that the vatican has accumulated over the hundreds of years of it's existence, and like all capitalist, elite institutions this money has been accumulated from the blood and suffering of proletarians throughout the world (and it also goes against the teachings they pretend to stand for).

In the process of mocking and criticizing the pope, Fo puts forward a very progressive view of drugs, which I was very happy to see. Fo points out that illegalizing drugs only hurts the users more, and works towards making it harder for them to function (i.e. price increased, quality decreased), and to seek help and quit if they decide to. It also helps to spread blood-transmitted diseases like AIDS if the drug being used is injected intravenously with a needle (i.e clean needles are not available, or very hard to come by, and if it is illegal users are more likely to "shoot up" in more dangerous places, and with less caution). Overall, this is a great, comedic play which attacks organized religion, religious conservatism, and dangerous social policies, very well and in a humourous vein. Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

The Pope and the Witch - Dario Fo.pdf