The time for popes to show their magic is when they are alive – not dead.

Part of the all-but automatic beatification process of a pope and the road to his sainthood, is evidence of a credible miracle.

To gain sainthood a pope must show they are in-effect a kind of middleman ‘lightening rod’ on earth for their god called Yahweh.

Invariably this anecdotal evidence when provided is flimsy at best, and placed-on the-table long after their deaths.

No one seems to care that when someone is alive they are never able to display their magic-tricks and never, but never, in an open-public forum or say under scientific scrutiny.

If the current pope is to show us the power of god channeled through his form – why not stump-up with the goods right now rather than later when he is dead and buried?

Why doesn’t The Catholic Church show us Benedict is literally ‘gods emissary’ by showing-us now, rather than decades later, his miracle, so we can examine it in the harsh light of day?

The time for Benedict to show us his magic, say regeneration of a severed limb, is now - but there sweat FA chance of that happening.

That would lead the entire public and scientific community playing the devils advocate.