Pope Benedict concentrates on the real issues of the day

Today's Telegraph  reports that Pope Benedict has stated that in a new book on Chist that, contrary to popular belief, Jesus's birth was not presided over by oxen, asses, camels or indeed any other beasts.

"There is no mention of animals in the Gospels," he wrote in the third and last volume of his biography of Jesus Christ, which like the previous two books is expected to become an international best-seller, with an initial print run of a million copies.

But be not worried the  pontiff said that the tradition of donkeys or oxen beside the manger was so deeply entrenched that it would doubtless survive his scepticism. "No one will give up the oxen and the donkey in their Nativity scenes,"

The belief that animals were in the stable where Christ was born has proved an enduring tradition even in the Vatican - the elaborate Nativity scene set up in St Peter's Square in the weeks before Christmas each year has featured livestock such as sheep.

The Pope also sounded a note of caution over the popular belief that angels sang to the shepherds to proclaim Christ's birth, as recalled in the Christmas carol "Hark! The herald angels sing, Glory to the new-born King."

He writes that when the gospels refer to the "heavenly host" of angels "praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest", they in fact spoke the words rather than sang them.

"According to the evangelist, the angels "said" this," Benedict writes. "But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present."

The misunderstanding spawned the tradition of carol singing, the Pope said. "To this day...simple believers join in their caroling on the Holy Night, proclaiming in song the great joy that, from then until the end of time, is bestowed on all people."

he accounts of Matthew and Luke are not myths taken a stage further. They are firmly rooted, in terms of their basic conception, in the biblical tradition of God the Creator and Redeemer,"

Well there you have it. Angls spoke and there were no livestock in the stable.... Oh well that does not make me less well disposed to catholicism.....