THE right-wing head of Spain’s Catholic church, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, has expressed outrage over just about every reform introduced by the country’s socialist government – but nothing could have shocked this posturing old ninny more than seeing a picture of his niece on the cover of a best-selling soft porn magazine, Interviú.

Topless and dressed in suspenders, Magdalena Rouco Hernández stripped off to embarrass her uncle, who is head of the Spanish Episcopal Conference and also a friend of Pope Benedict XVI.

According to the Guardian, the mother-of-two posed bared her breasts on eight pages of the magazine – a curious mix of female flesh and serious investigations.

The 27-year-old, who went to mass every day as a girl, said she chose to do the photoshoot to expose her uncle’s “hypocrisy” following her father’s death.

My uncle never tires of repeating that the family is sacred and that you have to respect it. But then he does not respect it and abandons his own. When my father died, [Rouco] did not come to the funeral, didn’t send flowers or tell my mother of his sorrow. He told us he had a meeting with Pope John Paul II, but it was not true.

Magdelena also claimed Cardinal Rouco did not call her family after her mother’s death and failed to help her when her husband lost his job.

I wanted to bare naked the hypocrisy of my uncle.

Cardinal Rouco, 72, leads a conservative wing of the Spanish church which has clashed repeatedly with the socialist government over social reforms including the legalisation of gay marriage, quick divorces, educational reforms and stem-cell research.

The Cardinal’s hypocrisy appears to go further than just family matters.

It was recently revealed that he has been investing heavily in the Pfizer pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which manufacturers both Viagra and an injectable contraceptive, Dep-Provera, used by 30 million women worldwide.

Alas, as a result of the recent crisis over sub-prime mortgages, his investments of some 80,000 Euro a year have slumped by around 20 percent.

Awww!