Mayor Bloomberg took a pass on his annual lampooning of the city press corps this weekend to mark the death of Pope John Paul II.

Mr. Bloomberg, who last year was decked out as a gangster and performed in skits with the theme of the musical “Chicago,” told a crowd of several hundred journalists and their guests Saturday night at the New York Hilton’s Grand Ballroom that it was a sad day for Catholics and for all religious groups across the world, and that it wouldn’t feel right for him to perform.

While the $500-a-plate charity event put on by the Inner Circle, a venerable organization of journalists, seemed tame compared to past years because of the pope’s death, the press still poked fun at the mayor and at other elected officials with a satirical spoof on city politics titled “Let’s Get Ready to Fumble.”

The performance centered on Mr. Bloomberg’s quest to build a stadium for the New York Jets at Manhattan’s West Side and on his status as a newly converted Republican striving to stay afloat politically in a Democratic town. The second act had the Bloomberg character, who was dressed in a football jersey and green hat in the shape of a jet plane, avoiding his fellow Republican President Bush, dressed as a sheriff. Mr. Bloomberg, who until 2000 was a Democrat, is seen ducking GOP events at Gracie Mansion.

In a takeoff on “West Side Story,” the cast dueled in song with the Jets on one side of the stage and the famed long legged Rockettes on the other. The Rockettes, of course, dance at Radio City Music Hall, which is owned by Cablevision, the company that has tried to thwart the football team’s bid to build a stadium that would compete with Madison Square Garden, another Cablevision venue.

At one point the actor playing the mayor, Richard Lamb from CBS radio, suggested a follow-up art installation to “The Gates,” the orange sculpture erected in Central Park. His idea: Shrink-wrap MSG with James Dolan, the Garden’s chief executive, inside.

Among others at whom the cast took aim was a former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, who withdrew his name as Mr. Bush’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in December, citing concerns about his failure to pay taxes for a foreign nanny he once employed. It was later reported that Mr. Kerik conducted an extramarital affair at a Lower Manhattan apartment near the World Trade Center site. Saturday night’s show latched onto that scandal in a rendition of the song “Love Shack,” in which two female television reporters were shimmying on stage next to a stocky colleague with a shiny bald head like Mr. Kerik’s.

The evening also featured a rap with the artist Christo, who designed “The Gates,” and his wife, Jean-Claude. The reporter playing Jean-Claude was clad in a long, bright red wig.

Other highlights were the duet between the district attorney of Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, who is 85 and is running for a ninth term, and his challenger, Leslie Crocker Snyder. Mr. Morgenthau was depicted as the high-energy, elderly spokesman for the amusement park Great Adventure, doing cartwheels and dancing.