The Vatican’s announcement that it has forgiven John Lennon for comparing the Beatles’ popularity to that of Jesus Christ, communicated by its newspaper Osservatore Romano at the weekend, might appear to be the result of an enlightened, if belated, change of heart. Almost fondly, the paper’s editorial describes Lennon’s words as sounding “like a boast by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success” before going on to praise the songs of Lennon and McCartney for providing “a source of inspiration for more than one generation of pop musicians”.

Although it is interesting to discover that there is a Beatles fan in the Vatican, the announcement merely perpetuates and consolidates a misunderstanding that led, more than 40 years ago, to mass bonfires of Beatles records in the US. When I heard about the announcement I went straight to a cardboard box in which I keep newspaper cuttings. It’s from the London Evening Standard, and contains an interview with Lennon by Maureen Cleave.

Cleave talked to Lennon at his house in the Surrey stockbroker belt. She describes the home life of a Beatle — the Rolls, the Mini Cooper, the Ferrari, the wine cellar, the swimming pool, the gadgets, the library, the restless playfulness — with humour and perception. And in the tenth paragraph she quotes him directly: “We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first — rock’n’roll or Christianity.” There is no hint that either Cleave or Lennon had any idea of the storm that would break several months later when the words were reprinted in an American magazine and Christians in the southern states interpreted his throwaway — but not thoughtless — remarks as celebrating the Fab Four’s victory over the Messiah.

Maybe Cleave failed to find a way of indicating Lennon’s characteristic tone of voice. The remarks would have been delivered with a sardonic inflection, suggesting that the world was indeed a loopy place if it could pay more attention to a pop group than to a prophet. Lennon was wrong about many things, including the survival of Christianity (and, so far, rock’n’roll), but at least he thought about them and came to his own conclusions.