Feeling sprightly after recovering from wrist surgery yesterday, Pope Benedict the &!# gives that corrupter of innocence Harry Potter and flagrant 'mosexual Oscar Wilde the thumbs up. It's another loony episode of "That's Our Benny!"

Having suffered a fall in a room of his meek and humble Alpine vacation chalet, the pontiff underwent a 20-minute operation on his right wrist to heal a fracture. Hilarious bit ensued as surgeons did not see the stigmata that Benny saw on his own hand. Apparently, pappy goosestepped out of the hospital all smiles. Maybe it was the morphine. Uproarious canned laughter as deadpan, dry-humored nurse quipped, "It should have been Diprivan."

Presumably born again after such trauma, the 82-year-old Benny was in an unusually generous mood. His Hoary Holiness, who once condemned the Harry Potter series for its "subtle seductions...that have a deep effect and corrupt the Christian faith even before it could properly grow," has now been enchanted by the magic wand of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Score one for the wizard.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (the official papal rants and raves board) said this week that the new blockbuster drew

a clear line of demarcation between good and evil, making clear that good is right, and that in some cases this involves hard work and sacrifices.

The article goes on the praise the film's lovely treatment of teenage romance. Awww...it's just like when the Grinch grew a teeny-tiny smidgen of a heart!

Shocking papal plaudits don't stop there. The Vatican, which calls simple same-sex lovin' "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound" and "a destruction of God's work," can nonetheless get tickled by classic gay bitchiness. That same Vatican newsrag now loves that faaaaabulous flamer Oscar Wilde, claiming him a true convert to the joys of Catholic cultism merely because he had a priest at his deathbed! Are we sure it wasn't in his bed?

The newspaper says Wilde was more than "an aesthete and a lover of the ephemeral" ("Ephemeral?" Is that code for late 19th-century E?), but "one of the personalities of the 19th century who most lucidly analyzed the modern world in its disturbing as well as its positive aspects." Again, awww...

Of course, the Vatican's article makes a choice Wilde quote, "the things one feels absolutely certain about are never true." Just like a mother in deep denial as her son dances about the kitchen to "Everything's Coming Up Roses."

Of course, all this could be retracted once Benny's happy-happy-joy-joy morphine wears off and he actually reads his official paper.