No, that is not a fake headline. Here's the story from the Associated Press, in which the official Vatican newspaper praises Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Little Maggie et al on the occasion of the show's 20th anniversary. NB: the praise of laughter.
L'Osservatore Romano on Tuesday congratulated the show on its 20th anniversary, praising its philosophical leanings as well as its stinging and often irreverent take on religion. Without Homer Simpson and the other yellow-skinned characters "many today wouldn't know how to laugh," said the article titled "Aristotle's Virtues and Homer's Doughnut." The paper credited "The Simpsons" — the longest-running American animated program — with opening up cartoons to an adult audience. The Fox show is based on "realistic and intelligent writing," it said, though it added there was some reason to criticize its "excessively crude language, the violence of certain episodes or some extreme choices by the scriptwriters." Religion, from the snore-evoking sermons of the Rev. Lovejoy to Homer's face-to-face talks with God, appears so frequently on the show that it could be possible to come up with a "Simpsonian theology," it said.
Spectacular. And for gli Italiani, here's the original article from L'Osservatore, on I Simpson It's certainly the only time I remember seeing the phrase "al bar Moe's" in L'Osservatore.
(Wonder what the Catholic League will make of this?)
And I love how The Simpsons takes on the media. Kent Brockman really doesn't seem that cartoonish.