Pope Benedict XVI is walking away this week, Thursday to be exact, to live out the rest of his life in prayer. Call me a disbeliever, even a heathen, but I’m not buying it. Joseph Ratzinger is 85 years old, with better than 60 years punching the Catholic time clock, and he says he’ll retire now on Vatican grounds for as many Our Fathers and Hail Marys as he can squeeze in around daily Mass.

Well, I happen to have it from an indisputable source deep inside the Vatican Varsity Club that the story is a sham. The soon-to-be ex-pope already has purchased a 60-inch plasma TV and has turned his new digs into the Sistine Chapel of man-caves. The Bavarian-born Ratzinger just bought a new set of Callaways, has more golf balls than the Vatican has Communion hosts, and on Saturday a ComcastEuropa cable guy wired him up for NHL Center Ice and the NFL Network. All of it HD, of course, with surround sound.