L'Osservatore Romano congratulated THE SIMPSONS on its 20th anniversary, VARIETY reports.

"Many today wouldn't know how to laugh" if it weren't for the show, the Vatican's paper wrote in an article titled "Aristotle's Virtues and Homer's Doughnut."

The article credited the longest-running American animated program with turning an adult audience on to cartoons. The paper said the Fox show is based on "realistic and intelligent writing," although there is still cause for concern involving "excessively crude language, the violence of certain episodes or some extreme choices by the scriptwriters."