Four Cardinals Ask Francis To Clarify IKEA Instructions

Image: Sean Hobson

Telling the press today that instructions of Pope Francis’ IKEA gift to them had numerous inconsistencies, four cardinals wrote a letter to him asking that he “resolve the uncertainties and bring clarity to the instruction manual for the armchair.”

“We the undersigned, but also many bishops and priests, ask that you provide the correct interpretation to page three of the IKEA instructions for your AMÖRIS Armchair gift,” the cardinals wrote.

They went on to add that “both theologians and scholars have proposed interpretations” of how to put the armchair together, especially its third and fourth pages, “which contradict one another.”

“Compelled by our pastoral frustrations over this hastily written instruction pamphlet, and desiring to put this chair together once and for all, that faithful visitors may sit upon it, we, with profound respect, ask you, Holy Father, as Supreme Teacher of Construction, called to confirm his brothers in the build, to resolve the uncertainties and to bring clarity to these vague images of nuts, bolts, and other material that we cannot distinguish.”

A foreword to the letter states that the main issue regarding the instruction manual is that the legs of the armchair shown in the instructions in page five were not included in the box, giving the chair “no legs to stand on.”