EVERY year, the Church Commissioners publish bishops' accounts, and every year now the Daily Mail bites on granite in its attempt to find prelatical extravagance.

They do things differently in Germany, and very much better from the point of view of the scandalmongering press. Even the Financial Times got in on the action with the story of the Rt Revd Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, RC Bishop of Limburg.

Admittedly, the story referred to the bishop's "parish", but it had all the juicy bits well presented: "'He's behaved like a baroque prince of the church, said one former Limburg resident on Thursday. 'The German Catholic church spends €100m a year on social work in developing countries. He has spent a third of that on his residence.'

"The soaring costs were confirmed this week by diocesan officials, including details of a €15,000 bath installed in the bishop's residence, constant changes in the building plans, and top-of-the-range materials used for all the fittings. When the project began in 2010, the total cost was put at €5.5 million. The latest estimate is €31 million.

"To compound the indignity for the bishop, the state prosecutor in Hamburg issued an indictment on Thursday for issuing false affidavits to the court in a case he had brought against the magazine Der Spiegel, over an article that alleged he had flown first-class on a church trip to India."

It is a shame that no one here quoted Browning about the Bishop ordering his sons to set right his tomb in St Praxed's church; for, though no one has accused Bishop Tebartz-van Elst of having a mistress - and I'm sure that there's no scandal about one in the wings - it all is wonderfully reminiscent of the poem's sensuous greed:

And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.

Instead of the €15,000 bath in Limburg, Browning's bishop had one of solid jasper:

My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut.

The Guardian dwelt most on his final indignity, when he was summoned to Rome: "Wedged into an economy seat next to the window, a disgraced bishop who spent millions on a lavish new residence has flown on a budget airline to Rome where his future is expected to be decided by Pope Francis."

Or, as Browning had it, "evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage." Well, I hope it was brief - with Ryanair, you never know - but evil, certainly. And full marks, too, to The Guardian for illustrating one story on the scandal with the campest picture I have ever seen of any bishop in any denomination.

THIS was a story without any moral interest whatever. More interesting was the story of another German Roman Catholic who thought he was playing by the rules with much more terrible consequences. Erich Priebke was an SS officer who took part in the massacre of 334 hostages in some caves outside Rome. They had been rounded up in retaliation for the deaths of 33 Germans in a Partisan attack, and he admitted to shooting two of them personally and ordering the deaths of many others. The admission came many years later; for, after the war, like many Germans with his political views, he made a home in Argentina, and lived there for 50 years until deported back to Italy, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996.

So, where should he be buried? Argentina does not want him back, where he could lie beside his wife. No one in Germany wants him, except some neo-Nazis whose enthusiasm frightens everybody else. And the diocese of Rome is having second thoughts.

A characteristically subtle and thoughtful piece by John L. Allen in the National Catholic Reporter lays out the problem: "The Vicariate of Rome under Italian Cardinal Agostino Vallini, which ad- ministers the Rome diocese in the name of the Pope, issued a statement saying no funeral for Priebke would be held in a Roman church."

But Allen also found a cardinal, the retired Swiss Georges Cottier, who wanted a quiet funeral for Priebke in Rome: "In an interview, Cottier conceded there are cases in which funerals might be denied, but implies it ought to be rare because 'everyone needs prayer. . . I think that if funerals were denied to everyone who committed evil during their lives, it would be anticipating the judgment of God,' he said."

It is sometimes a little frustrating that arguments of such subtlety and, in fact, general interest so seldom break into the news reporting of secular papers.