VATICAN CITY • Three men walked into the Vatican, a Cardinal-designate, a pope and a ...

OK, things weren't quite that funny at the Vatican on Friday, but considering the setting, it was close.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the Ballwin native who is archbishop of New York, had them rolling in the aisles — for a church meeting — as Cardinals new and old joined Pope Benedict XVI for a pre-consistory day of reflection on spreading the faith in an increasingly secularized world.

While the subject matter was deadly serious, Dolan's delivery lightened the mood. He was so funny that reporters ran to the Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, to ask if it was appropriate. Lombardi assured them that the pope, too, enjoyed Dolan's "lively" remarks.

So the message of the day is that it is OK to have a good time in Rome.

Dolan managed to draw laughter from his audience, including Benedict, when he apologized for delivering his speech in a broken Italian: "I speak Italian like a child," he said.

Drawing on sources as diverse as St. Augustine and Martin Sheen's "The Way," he told cardinals that spreading the gospel must be "accomplished with a smile, not a frown."

Noting that a cardinal's red cassock symbolizes his willingness to defend the faith "even to the shedding of (his) blood," Dolan jokingly asked Pope Benedict, "Holy Father, can you omit 'to the shedding of your blood' when you present me with the biretta?".

"Of course not!" Dolan continued. "We are but 'scarlet audio-visual aids' for all of our brothers and sisters also called to be ready to suffer and die for Jesus."

Benedict praised Dolan's speech as 'stirring, joyous and profound," Lombardi said.

He could have said "hilarious," too.

Dolan's humor is being appreciated for another reason: These are tense times for the Vatican. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano alluded to it, saying in a front-page editorial this week that Benedict was fighting unnamed, irresponsible "wolves." The pope himself made a vague reference to the rumors during a meeting with seminarians Wednesday when he said a lot was being said about the church in these days.

"Let's hope that our faith, the exemplary faith of this church, is also talked about," he said.

The picture that has emerged is one of political infighting and intrigue inside and outside the Vatican. One scenario suggests internal power struggles centering around Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope's longtime deputy and the Vatican's secretary of state whose leadership has been called into question after several botched decisions. The other underscores the tense relations the Vatican's financial institutions have with the Bank of Italy and Italian prosecutors.

"There is a great discontent within the Roman curia, the outproducts of this discontent are backstabbing, intrigues, anonymous letters about plots, but the main thing is that Cardinal Bertone, who is the secretary of state, was never accepted by the curia because he was an outsider," said Marco Politi, a veteran Vatican watcher.

Against that backdrop is the perennial papal gossiping that comes with any consistory, since the ceremonies exist purely to restaff the College of Cardinals, which selects the next pope. All cardinals under age 80 are eligible to vote in a papal conclave.

The Italians are gaining seven new voting-age cardinals, adding to the eight they picked up at the last consistory in November 2010. That boosts Italy's chances of taking back the papacy for one of its own following decades under a Polish and a German pope, or at least playing the kingmaker. As of Saturday, Italy will have 30 cardinals out of the 125 under age 80. Only the United States comes close with 12, including Dolan.

Dolan said in an interview this week that he had remained largely aloof to the rumor-mongering, saying he had used his time in Rome to write his speech and buy his new crimson robes that he admitted were already getting tight after too many bowls of carbonara, a typical Roman dish of pasta tossed with egg yolk, cheese and guanciale, or pork jowl.

"I've got enough challenges in New York and we've got enough problems with the church in the United States that I don't need to get my noggin all worried about the gossip that sometimes comes out of the Vatican," he said.