Rome, Italy – Citing a great need for balance and stability in the cosmic order, Pope Francis announced plans today to introduce three new sets of mysteries to the rosary. Adding to the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, and recent production of the Luminous mysteries, this will increase the “full Rosary” to thirty-five decades.

“The Joyful Mysteries are balanced by the Sorrowful Mysteries,” says Papal advisor Cardinal Gunter Schuster, “but what about the Luminous? Why isn’t there a Darkinous set of mysteries? A Actinonated set of mysteries to make things more interesting? Or a set of Humorous Mysteries to make the Rosary more fun?”

Well, Cardinal Schuster’s ideas are again soon to become reality as all three of these new sets of mysteries will be released just before Christmas 2020 in Churches everywhere. Pope Francis commented that not only does he like Schuster’s proposal for “balance” in the Rosary franchise but he also sees fairness “requiring that each set of Mysteries be prayed only once each week”, in other words, that we have seven sets of mysteries for the seven days of the week.

Details, as usual, are scarce, but IIT sources indicate that Pope Francis has been moving toward this endgame of modifying the Rosary for the past five years, next year’s release being termed already the “culmination of his pontificate”. Cardinal Lenders of Belgium, famous for his comments last year on the matter of bubbles in the liturgy, will officially head up the papal commission on their implementation but Cardinal Schuster appears to be the major driving force behind the idea.

The Life of Jesus Christ (the Christ Saga) is already covered quite well, so we wonder what exactly will be the feature of all these mysteries. Will they float in chronologically in and around the existing mysteries? Will they cover a vastly different time period? Will they be based on a new canonical gospel, and if so, which one.”

Perhaps Cardinal Lenders, recalled to produce these fifteen new decades after a divisive last installment, The Luminous Mysteries, has sapped at the Rosary’s fan base he will attempt to retcon many of the twists director Smith Rob 34 introduced there for Pope John Paul II. But such a move would anger many who claim the Rosary’s essence is being destroyed with all this modification.

A “Save My Rosary” march on the Vatican has drawn an estimated 3,000,000 people interested already in protesting the “changes” or “modernizations”.