But to my eye, the pope performing an Easter footwashing ritual meant to show humility in the Catholic style must look more [...]]]> There’s been a lot of talk about bad “optics” the past couple days about Obama’s tango twirls while Europe had suffered a murderous jihad attack in Brussels and perps are still at large.

But to my eye, the pope performing an Easter footwashing ritual meant to show humility in the Catholic style must look more like surrender to the headchopper thugs of ISIS. This being the migrant-loving Pope Francis, he made a show of embracing foreigner diversity by including Muslim, Christian and Hindu asylum-seekers, instead of ministering to 12 Catholic men as previous popes have done.

Humbling himself to Muslim invaders can easily be seen by jihadists as a big step forward in their plan to defeat the Christians in the Catholics’ capital city. (See my blog from last fall: A Goal of ISIS Is to Conquer Rome in Five Years). Showing weakness to the bloodthirsty enemies of civilization and freedom is unwise to say the least.

Pope Francis Washes, Kisses Feet of Migrants on Holy Thursday, Breitbart.com March 25, 2016

In a special rite commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of 11 Muslim, Christian and Hindu asylum-seekers Thursday and declared them all children of the same Father.

The Holy Thursday ritual re-enacts Jesus washing his apostles’ feet before being crucified, and is meant as a gesture of service. Francis contrasted that gesture with the “gesture of war” carried out by the Brussels attackers on Monday.

Instead of celebrating Mass in the Vatican as usual, the Pope traveled to the welcome center in the town of Castelnuovo di Porto, where he greeted the asylum-seekers, many of whom are not Christians.

The Pope told them that Jesus’ gesture of service stood in sharp contrast to Judas’ gesture of betrayal, which the Pope likened to the brutal jihadist attacks.

In denouncing the attacks, the Pope said its perpetrators wanted to destroy the brotherhood of humanity.

Pope Francis knelt and washed the feet of four Catholics from Nigeria, three Eritrean women who are Coptic Christians, three Muslims from Mali, Syria and Pakistan, a Hindu man from India and an Italian woman who works at the center. Several migrants wept as Francis knelt before them, poured water from a brass pitcher over their feet, wiped them clean and kissed them.

“We have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and we want to live in peace,” Francis said in his homily, delivered in the courtyard of the welcome center.

“All of us, together: Muslims, Hindi, Catholics, Copts, Evangelicals. But brothers, children of the same God,” he said. “We want to live in peace, integrated.”

In his Palm Sunday homily earlier this week, the Pope spoke of Jesus’ radical humility, living among us in “the condition of a servant” rather than that of a king or a prince, and the abyss of his humiliation “seems to be bottomless.”

He bent down to wash the feet of his disciples, laying aside his role as “Lord and Master” and preferring the position of a servant, Francis noted.

The Pope also compared Jesus to today’s migrants, saying that Jesus had been shuffled around as nobody’s problem. “Pilate then sends him to Herod, who in turn sends him to the Roman governor,” Francis said, and “no one wishes to take responsibility for his fate.”

“And I think of the many people, so many outcasts, so many asylum seekers, so many refugees, all of those for whose fate no one wishes to take responsibility,” he said.

During 2015, Europe processed some 1.3 million asylum claims, of which 292,540 were approved as refugees. The majority came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

In [...]]]> Pope Francis is visiting Mexico this week to check in on some of his Latin American flock, in particular to draw attention to the plight of (illegal) immigrants by holding a well publicized mass on the US border. The purpose? To guilt trip Americans, probably, for being so mean by having borders, sort of.

In 2013, Pope Francis welcomed illegal alien Africans on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa as they made their way to Europe.

The elites of the catholic church think the poor have an intrinsic right to cross borders illegally to take other people’s jobs. “Any family in economic need has a right to immigrate, that’s our posture,” according to a Texas spokespriest.

That’s a funny sort of morality. Robbing Peter to pay Paul was not considered an ethical plus in the Presbyterian church where I grew up. More than 94 million Americans were out of the workforce as of January, the sixth month in a row for that high of a number according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the pope thinks America needs more Mexican aliens.

Wait, wasn’t the pope poking into American domestic affairs just a few months ago? In fact, it was only last September when he got a red carpet welcome in Washington including a speaking gig before a joint session of Congress, thanks to then-Speaker John Boehner.

Now the pope is coming back, at least to the US border from the Mexican side, to push his Marxist open-borders agenda. He can’t stay away.

(Here’s a little Dan Hicks tribute with a blog-appropriate song. He died on Saturday.)

Even the pro-foreigner LA Times notices the pope visit is fraught with politics.

Pope Francis plans a symbolically freighted trip to Mexico, Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2016

Pope Francis travels to Mexico this week, saying he wants to “live the faith” of the overwhelmingly Catholic country but will not shy away from confronting issues of violence and corruption that could make his governmental hosts quite uncomfortable.

History’s first pontiff from the Americas will also stand on Mexico’s border with the United States and make an impassioned plea for the plight of immigrants. His entire pilgrimage from southern to northern Mexico is meant to represent the perilous route that migrants take to reach the U.S.

This is the Argentine pope’s fourth trip to Latin America, home to Roman Catholic communities that are the largest in the world but have faced challenges from the spread of Protestantism, loss of faith and slowed population growth because of migration, homicide and lower birth rates.

The Mexico that Francis visits, following the well-worn path of his two predecessors, is enduring a decade-old wave of brutal criminal and “narco” warfare, a spate of egregious human rights abuses, an economic slump and official corruption that has helped take President Enrique Peña Nieto’s approval rating to historic lows.

“You are living your little piece of war,” Francis said last week in a video message to Mexicans via the semiofficial Notimex news agency.

“The Mexico of violence, the Mexico of corruption, the Mexico of drug trafficking, the Mexico of cartels, is not the Mexico that our mother [the Virgin Mary] wants,” he added. “I, of course, will not cover any of that up.

“To the contrary,” he added, “I want to exhort you to fight every day against corruption, against trafficking, against war, disunity, organized crime.”

Even before the pope sets foot Friday on Mexican soil, government officials were incensed by his comments.

“Undoubtedly, he has certain information,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said. “The best information will be what he can see here.”

Mexico was once a highly anticlerical country; after the 1910 revolution, the government confiscated church property and prohibited priests from wearing their collars and robes in public.

That trend has been reversed; diplomatic ties with the Holy See were established in 1994, and many clerics today tend to be supportive of the government of the moment. Despite losses and a strong secular strain, Mexico remains more than 80% Catholic.

The six cities that Francis has chosen to place on his itinerary speak volumes of his intended message.

He will come to this sprawling megalopolis, site of the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico and all the Americas; worship of her goes to the heart even of secular Mexicans here and in Southern California.

Just outside Mexico City lies the notoriously poor and dangerous city of Ecatepec, where nearly 2 million live. Part of the state of Mexico, governed by Peña Nieto before he became president, Ecatepec also has one of the country’s highest incidents of killings of women.

He will say Mass in Morelia, capital of Michoacan state, one of the top sources of migrants who live in the U.S. It is also a region that has been terrorized by a pseudo-religious drug gang, La Familia Michoacana, and its successor, the Knights Templar, and where rural priests have been killed, kidnapped and threatened.

Francis gave Morelia a cardinal just last year, Alberto Suarez Inda, and he is expected to console and praise Suarez and the priests of Michoacan for doing God’s work ministering to the faithful in the face of such dangers. The government has already dispatched the army and navy to back up police in Morelia for the pope’s visit.

Francis will tread into the least traditionally Catholic state, Chiapas, on Mexico’s border with Guatemala and home to many semiautonomous indigenous communities.

Protestant Pentecostalism has made significant inroads in Chiapas, and so has liberation theology, the pro-left version of Christianity that had fallen out of favor at the Vatican — until the ascension in 2013 of Francis, a vocal proponent of the doctrine’s emphasis on the poor.

Chiapas is Mexico’s most impoverished and neglected state. In the picturesque, mountainous city of San Cristobal de las Casas, Francis will lead prayers using indigenous languages, such as Tzotzil and Chol, and will feature Maya dance and symbols, Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel said.

The pontiff will issue rules to formally allow the use of indigenous languages in church services, something that Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, had discouraged.

Francis also chose Chiapas because it is the most common entry point for Central American migrants fleeing nightmarish bloodshed and crushing poverty and hoping to reach the U.S.

His final stop is the northern border city of Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, thus symbolically tracing the route of migrants.

Juarez once had the highest murder rate of the country and, possibly, all of Latin America. But a combination of developments, including the apparent victory of one drug gang over its rivals, as well as social programs launched by private business, has significantly reduced the killing.

In what is expected to be one of the most emotional moments of the pope’s pilgrimage, he will preside over a cross-border Mass on Feb. 17, with perhaps 200,000 on the Juarez side and others on the U.S. side. About 50,000 will watch a simulcast at El Paso’s Sun Bowl stadium. The stage from which he will pray is only about 80 yards from the border fence, and he plans to ride along the barrier in his popemobile.

“The Mass will be deliberately visible from both sides,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in a briefing for reporters in Rome.

The event follows a tradition started by U.S. bishops of saying Mass at the border fence in a show of unity and support for migrants.

Lombardi also said that victims of Mexico’s conflicts, including relatives of some of the more than 20,000 people missing in the country, have been invited to attend the Juarez ceremony. Among them, he confirmed, will be relatives of the 43 Mexican college students kidnapped by police working with local politicians 16 months ago. The students were killed, a case that continues to roil the nation.

The families had requested a private meeting with the pope, but Lombardi said it could not be fit into the itinerary. “It will not be an individual meeting, because of his timetable, but their request to participate has been met,” he said.

With nonstop television coverage of the pope in Mexico, the Peña Nieto administration and his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, may hope to score political points. Regional elections are taking place this year in 13 states, where the PRI will want to gain or expand its power.

Suspicion among many Mexicans that that is the government’s ulterior motive has led to a lot of anger about what will undoubtedly be an elaborate and expensive spectacle. A Twitter campaign has grown in recent days with the hashtag yonoquieroquevengaelpapa (“I don’t want the pope to come”).

But if favorable publicity informs the government’s calculation, it may not work, especially if Francis holds true to his tendencies to chide the powerful.

“The pope does not hesitate to speak frankly and directly to the communities he visits,” said Father Kevin F. O’Brien, vice president for mission and ministry at Georgetown University in Washington and, like the pope, a Jesuit.

He recalled the pope’s admonition of the Mafia during a visit to Sicily and denunciation of the treatment of immigrants at Lampedusa, the Italian island where many African and Middle Eastern refugees have washed ashore and often died.

On the eve of the pope’s arrival, the Catholic Church in Mexico issued a scathing editorial that in many ways sets the tone of the visit.

“Mexico is facing violence and criminal phenomena that appear unprecedented in its modern history,” the editorial, published in the Mexican Archdiocese’s Desde la Fe magazine, said. “It makes us question the capability of authorities at every level of government.”

Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, said Francis’ trips to Mexico and to Brazil in 2013 are the most important of his “dynamic” papacy — and Mexico even more so because the Brazil event had been planned by Benedict before his surprise resignation.

“One of the main reasons a Latin American was elected pope was to try to reverse the sharp decline of the Catholic Church in the region over the past five decades,” Chesnut said. “In the context of the hemorrhaging of members … Mexico emerges as the most pivotal tour to date, also because several of the major themes of the trip echo his larger, global agenda, such as migrants, refugees, corruption and violence.”

In his Notimex remarks, the pope also cautioned against exaggerated expectations: “I am not going to Mexico as one of the Three Wise Men, loaded with [gifts], messages, ideas, solutions to problems.

“I am going to Mexico as a pilgrim, to seek the wealth of faith that you all have. I want to become infected with that wealth of faith, to live that faith with you. I am going with my heart open so that it might fill with all you can give me.”

But one has turned up. Mehdi Ben Nasr (pictured) was caught only [...]]]> Governments in Europe have deluded themselves with the idea that the aliens flooding in from the Middle East and beyond are war refugees or economic migrants because jihadists wouldn’t bother with the messy trek overland or across the Mediterranean. Or something like that.

But one has turned up. Mehdi Ben Nasr (pictured) was caught only because officers became suspicious of him after he had arrived on Lampedusa and he could be identified because Italy had his fingerprints from when he served time for terrorist activity in Italy several years ago.

How many more aren’t noticed when thousands are flooding through every day?

And in this country, the administration is determined to import a hundred thousand Syrian Muslims over the next year, and many more to follow.

Chairman Mike McCaul of the House Homeland Security Committee has expressed doubts that Syrians can safely be brought into the US. During a hearing examining the subject, he remarked, “I think this would be a huge mistake if we bring in these refugees into the United States that could potentially be radicalized.”

Senator Jeff Sessions chaired a hearing in October where it was made clear that Syrians could not be adequately screened because the government does not have a database of information about Syrians.

The refugee scheme is a clear danger to America’s national security, but Obama and company are determined to import as many Muslims as possible in his final year.

Al Qaeda boss who served seven years for terror offences ‘smuggled himself into Europe by posing as a refugee’, Daily Mail, November 7, 2015

The leader of an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group was smuggled into Europe posing as a refugee trying to cross the Mediterranean, it has been claimed.

Mehdi Ben Nasr, 38, served seven years in jail for being the leader of a jihadi cell which recruited would-be suicide bombers in Europe and directed them to Iraq and Afghanistan.

European leaders have denied that there is evidence of jihadis exploiting the refugee crisis by disguising themselves as migrants and joining them on crossings.

But intelligence analysts have warned that would-be militants could be using the migrant routes to reach Europe undetected.

Once ashore in countries such as Italy and Greece, it is feared that militants could side-step identification by the authorities – and plot violent attacks on European cities.

Mehdi was arrested in 2007 in a Europe wide anti-terrorism operation in 2007.

During the operation in Britain, France and Portugal as well as Italy police seized poisons, remote explosive detonators and Al Qaeda manuals on guerrilla warfare.

Mehdi was ‘a terrorist of the most dangerous kind’ because he was a explosives expert and the ‘North Star’ of the group that recruited and arranged the travel of would-be jihadis to the Middle east,’ Italian intelligence sources told Il Giornale

He was deported to Tunisia last year after serving his sentence in Italy.

But in October he attempted to conceal himself among 200 refugees rescued by an Italian warship in the Mediterranean.

Mehdi arrived in Sicily on October 4 giving the fake name Mohamed Ben Sar and claiming political asylum.

He was arrested on suspicion of trafficking.

Police in Agrigento said: ‘On 7 October 2015, four foreign citizens of Tunisian nationality were arrested accused of aiding illegal immigration.’

‘As a result of the investigation it emerged that the immigrants had already been expelled from Italy but reentered via Lampedusa along with migrants of various ethnicities.’

The Tunisian has been redeported and handed over to Tunisian police.

Mehdi was one of 14 Algerians and Tunisians arrested in 2007 including two in London. Ali Ben Zidane Chehidi and Mohamed Salah Ben Hamadi Khemiri, were arrested in the UK accused of forging documents for jihadis. They were extradited to Italy but eventually cleared.

The group, which had been under investigation since 2003, set up ‘Salafist jihadi’ militant cells which recruited and assisted would-be suicide bombers.

They were also accused of illegal immigration, falsifying identity documents and helping hide people sought for terrorist activity.

It’s a favorite theme for him. He recently called upon European Catholics to [...]]]> On Saturday, Pope Francis left the Vatican for a trip visiting Cuba and three cities in the United States. All signs indicate that the pope plans to lecture rich capitalist America to open the borders wide, as he has done before everywhere.

It’s a favorite theme for him. He recently called upon European Catholics to shelter refugees, as thousands of illegal aliens swarm into the continent. He said each church should provide a place to stay for a family, which would spread out the foreigners into every catholic parish. It wouldn’t solve the problem when hundreds of thousands are crowding in: churches providing shelter for a relative few is just empty symbolism that the press will love.

Perhaps the pope thought he should act as a good example, and accordingly he announced that a Syrian family would be welcomed into housing in the Vatican mini-country. Conveniently, the family is Christian, while the great majority of the hordes breaching Europe are young Muslim men who are very demanding about how they should be treated.

Below, during a papal visit to Istanbul last fall, the Grand Mufti displayed a koran to the pope. Francis has said that true Islam is not violent and the koran and the bible are the same.

The latest figures from Eurostat reveal that only 20 percent of recent illegal entrants are Syrian, with the rest being economic opportunists from Bangladesh to South Sudan. So the great majority flooding to Europe now are not war refugees at all. Nevertheless, the lefty pope believes that law and sovereignty should be thrown out and replaced with utopian do-gooder fantasies.

Pope Francis puts up Syrian refugee family, The Local (Italy), September 18, 2015

Pope Francis is putting up a Syrian refugee family from Damascus in a Vatican apartment, aides revealed on Friday.

The Christian family is the first of two that the Catholic leader has promised to find space for as part of a broader Church effort to help shape Europe’s response to the ongoing migration crisis, partly caused by the conflict in Syria.

The family arrived in Italy on September 6th, the day the pope called on every Catholic parish across Europe to find space for at least one family of refugees.

The family arrived in Italy on September 6, the day the pope called on every Catholic parish across Europe to find space for at least one family of refugees.

The family being housed in the Vatican is to remain anonymous until Italian authorities have ruled on their asylum request.

As Christians who have fled a Syria wracked by a deadly civil war and the persecution of minorities, they are highly likely to be quickly granted leave to remain in Italy.

The processing of their application could however take months, possibly years, unless they are made a special case.

In his call for the Church to take a lead on the migration issue, Francis urged local communities of believers to make a “concrete gesture” ahead of a Jubilee Year of Mercy starting in December.

He said “every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe,” should take part.

“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers fleeing death (as) victims of war and hunger who are hoping to start a new life, the gospel calls on us and asks us to be the neighbour of the smallest and the most abandoned, to give them concrete hope,” he said in a Sunday address in St Peter’s square.

The Argentinian pontiff has made the fate of society’s weakest, including the hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in Europe, the dominant theme of his papacy.

His call for a grassroots response to the crisis has been widely praised and he acknowledged that initiatives across Europe had inspired him, comparing them to a biblical miracle in which which Jesus heals a deaf and mute man.

“We have been healed of the deafness of selfishness and the silence of retreating into ourselves,” he said.

“The closed couple, the closed family, the closed group, the closed parish, the closed country, that comes from us, it has nothing to do with God.”

The fate of migrants is also expected to be a theme in the pope’s visit to the United States next week.

Since taking office in 2013, Francis has also stepped up the Vatican’s support for the homeless living within its walls and across Rome, notably by having showers installed in public toilets in St Peter’s square.

And he has personally eschewed the Vatican palace and summer residence he could have occupied in favour of a modest boarding house.

Below, foreign scroungers lounge about near Rome’s Tiburtina train station earlier this summer.

Italy is unlucky in geography, with its southerly island of Lampedusa [...]]]> Over in the European spots popular with illegal aliens, the newbie squatters are cluttering up the place. Where to put them so the locals won’t trip over the diverse invaders?

Below, foreign scroungers lounge about near Rome’s Tiburtina train station earlier this summer.

Italy is unlucky in geography, with its southerly island of Lampedusa located just 70 miles from Africa, making it an easy destination for moocher fleebags. Modern communications have shown third-worlders that a more luxurious life is available if they can reach Europe and claim victimhood.

Europeans better wake up to the unforgiving demographics. The UN has a new report out, forecasting more rapid population growth than earlier projections: 11 billion humans on earth by 2100.

The growth leader is Africa, exploding from 1 billion today to well over 4 billion in 85 years:

And every African who is allowed to stay in Europe will be texting the rest of his family to join him in the wealthy first world, where welfare offices hand out free money to anyone with a hard-luck story. There’s no reason for millions not to come when Europe makes itself so attractive.

Rome ‘too crowded’ for more migrants: mayor, The Local, August 4, 2015

Rome receives the second-largest number of refugees among Italian cities, but Mayor Ignazio Marino has warned that the Italian capital is reaching saturation point.

His warning comes less than a month after violent protests broke out over the arrival of 100 refugees in Casale San Nicola, a suburb in the outskirts of the city.

Concerned about how to accommodate more refugees, Marino said the city is “overcrowded”.

“We can’t welcome 18 to 20 percent of people who arrive in our country. We don’t have the resources,” he was cited by Ansa as telling a Lower House commission on immigration on Tuesday.

With reception centres bursting at the seams, refugees set up a makeshift camp outside Rome’s Tiburtina station in mid-June before it was raided by police.

Several leaders in Italy’s wealthier north have refused to bow to a government call to take in more refugees, but this is the first time concerns have been voiced by the Rome mayor.

But tensions over immigration have escalated across Italy in recent months. A day before the Rome protests, residents in a Treviso district burnt furniture intended for refugees in protest against their arrival. The refugees were eventually taken to an empty police station outside the city.

Marino is also under pressure to fix the city’s myriad other problems, including its transport system, the maintenance of monuments and its waste issue.

Europeans located on the edges, like Italians [...]]]> Not that many years ago, when a nation was invaded, its government organized resistance through its military forces. These days, the governments of Europe are facilitating the invasion by rescuing the thousands Africans headed north for plunder and depositing them in the desired end point of their journey.

Europeans located on the edges, like Italians and Greeks, are not happy with being inundated by diverse hordes looking for a handout.

Below, African men disembark on the alien-battered Italian island of Lampedusa in May 2015.

As happens when governments don’t do the job they were hired to do, the DIY urge may occur among the citizens (sometimes called vigilantism). Instances of citizens protecting their country from invasion via illegal immigration will hopefully expand, because that’s the only hope for Europe’s survival.

It’s unfortunate that Italians feel they must defend their homes against opportunists from the third world. There are some genuine refugees taking to boats across the Mediterranean, but most are economic moochers from peaceful African nations who want a first-world lifestyle.

Meanwhile Europe has problems of its own, like stubborn unemployment and doesn’t need thousands of unskilled African men who feel entitled to free stuff. This invasion could end badly when employment shrinks even further because of automation, and legions of jobless foreigners become disappointed and angry. Better to end it now, Europe.

Anti-immigrant protests break out in Rome, Treviso, ANSA, July 17, 2015

(ANSA) – Rome, July 17 – A bus carrying 19 asylum seekers and escorted by police in riot gear pushed past protesting local residents and extremists from the far-right Casapound political group to arrive at the doors of a migrant reception centre in Rome’s Casale San Nicola district Friday. The refugees were spotted inside the bus, curtains drawn as the bus was pelted water bottles and other objects thrown by anti-immigrant protesters, some of them shouting “You have to get out of here”.

Police at one point baton-charged the protesters after coming under a barrage of objects including sun umbrellas and chairs. Protesters also torched rubbish bins and bales of hay, while others tried to block a street.

Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli was adamant that the protesters would be cleared. “We won’t take any steps back,” he said. Later in the day he said the violent anti-immigrant demonstrations were “indecent and unseemly”. “I hope law enforcement will cite these people so their records will reflect the things they have stained themselves with,” he said.

The prefect added “I sincerely hope the temperature will go down”. Police said later that 14 of their own were injured in the violent clashes and they arrested two protesters, cited one offender, and identified 15 more. Investigators are still going over video material to identify further suspects, police said in a statement.

Also on Friday, similar protests broke out in northern Italy, where governors from the anti-immigrant, anti-euro Northern League party have been inciting mayors to fight the arrivals of migrants into the region. Among them was Veneto Governor Luca Zaia, who complained about the “Africanization” of his region through the admission refugees into his area. Some 100 migrants whose presence in a hotel in a small town near Treviso sparked two days of protests from local residents and rightwing extremists from the Forza Nuova group – including the burning of mattresses meant for the asylum seekers – were bused to a former barracks located between the municipalities of Treviso and Casier. Their respective mayors, Giovanni Manildo and Miriam Giuriati, met with area residents prior to the transfer and explained that authorities would guarantee security and keep the peace. The area is manned by law enforcement and local police patrols.

Treviso also saw leftists from the ZTL collective go into action in defense of the refugees, occupying parts of the prefecture and calling for the prefect to step down after he bowed to violent pressure from anti-immigrant residents and rightwingers.

Police arrested 38 ZTL members in the course of that protest.

The Northern League has stepped up its anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent months, as a growing migrant crisis fuels political divisions in the country, which is struggling to emerge from an economic slump that has thrown many people into unemployment.

“Instead of giving protesting mayors and citizens a hard time, prefects should do their job and stop coddling thousands of illegal immigrants,” said League chief Matteo Salvini.

Khalid Chaouki, an MP for the ruling centre-left Democratic Party (PD), slammed Salvini in response. “Salvini’s instigation to violence is shameful! Trying to pick up votes on people’s misfortune is disgusting,” he said on Twitter following the protests in Rome and Treviso. Italy has seen a wave of migrants and asylum seekers from the across the Mediterranean as thousands flee war and violence in Africa and Middle East. New figures suggested about 170,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in the first half of this year alone.

Last Wednesday the catholic monarch complained that Europe was insufficiently welcoming to the people of Africa (population 1 billion) and beyond who are invading by the thousands. (One estimate is over 130,000 illegals have arrived uninvited to Europe [...]]]> Pope Francis has had quite the liberal week with his outspoken comments against national sovereignty and firearms.

Last Wednesday the catholic monarch complained that Europe was insufficiently welcoming to the people of Africa (population 1 billion) and beyond who are invading by the thousands. (One estimate is over 130,000 illegals have arrived uninvited to Europe so far this year.)

Below, the anti-borders pope visited the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013 to “highlight the suffering of migrants.” The island has been overrun with African illegal aliens because of its proximity to Tunisia and Libya.

Pope criticizes nations that close doors to migrants, Reuters, June 17, 2015

Pope Francis on Wednesday called for respect for migrants and suggested that “people and institutions” who close doors to them should seek forgiveness from God.

The pope’s appeal, made at the end of his weekly general audience, came amid growing debate in Europe on how to deal with an immigrant crisis that has included clashes at the French-Italian borer between police and migrants.

“I invite you all to ask forgiveness for the persons and the institutions who close the door to these people who are seeking a family, who are seeking to be protected,” he said in unscripted remarks delivered in a somber voice. [. . .]

“Out of curiosity, how many immigrants are there in the Vatican State?” northern Italian broadcaster Radio Padania Libera quoted [Northern League leader Matteo] Salvini as asking.

Then on Sunday, the pope went ballistic against weapons manufacturers, calling them un-Christian.

Whoa. The pope has a substantial Vatican army, the Swiss Guards who, despite their silly medieval outfits, are well armed professional soldiers. Columnist Charles C.K. Cooke noted in a tweet, “His bodyguards use SIG P220 and Glock 19 pistols, Steyr TMPs, and H&K MP5A3 submachine guns. Where do they get them?”

So the pope is adequately guarded, but he objects to the tools by which others protect themselves. His complaints represent typical liberal hypocrisy and the same old claptrap about guns.

If Francis gets his open-borders fantasy and Europe is opened to unrestricted millions of Africans and Middle Easterners, many of whom are unfriendly Muslims, a lot more weapons will be needed.

Pope says weapons manufacturers can’t call themselves Christian, Reuters, June 21, 2015

People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.

Francis issued his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry at a rally of thousands of young people at the end of the first day of his trip to the Italian city of Turin.

“If you trust only men you have lost,” he told the young people in a long, rambling talk about war, trust and politics after putting aside his prepared address.

“It makes me think of … people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit a distrust, doesn’t it?” he said to applause.

He also criticized those who invest in weapons industries, saying “duplicity is the currency of today … they say one thing and do another.”

Francis also built on comments he has made in the past about events during the first and second world wars.

He spoke of the “tragedy of the Shoah,” using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

“The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody. Why didn’t they bomb (the railway lines)?”

Discussing World War One, he spoke of “the great tragedy of Armenia” but did not use the word “genocide”.

Francis sparked a diplomatic row in April calling the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago “the first genocide of the 20th century,” prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador to the Vatican.