It is somewhat shocking for such a secular, political piece of art to be welcomed in the Vatican, but that aspect has not been mentioned in any report I’ve seen.
Below, Pope Francis inspects the Vatican’s new sculpture.
The piece is very dark — quite a switch from the rest of the Vatican sculptures which are light stone. Presumably the pope wants the bronze and its open-borders message to be noticed by everyone who visits — as it will be because of its huge size and unusual color.
]]>Pope Francis Inaugurates Massive Migrant Sculpture in Saint Peter’s Square, By Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart.com, September 29, 2019
ROME — Pope Francis unveiled a massive bronze sculpture depicting 140 migrants in Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican Sunday, the first sculpture to be installed in the piazza in over 400 years.
The 20-foot tall, 3.5-ton bronze sculpture was created by Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz at the behest of the Vatican’s office for Migrants and Refugees, after impressing the pope with his sculpture “Homeless Jesus” in November 2013.
The migrant sculpture bears the title “Angels Unaware” in reference to the biblical passage from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
The artist told Crux, an online Catholic news outlet, that the figures in the sculpture represent “a tapestry of people from all historical periods of time. From ancient migrant people to indigenous migrant people to contemporary Syrians and Africans.” He chose the number of 140 figures to create a symmetry with the 140 columns along Bernini’s iconic colonnade.
In unveiling the sculpture at midday Sunday, the pope was accompanied by the artist along with four migrants. Earlier that morning, the pontiff celebrated an open-air Mass in the Square dedicated to migrants and refugees.
During his Angelus message, the pope said that he was inaugurating the work to emphasize the Church’s commitment to migrants and refugees. (Continues)
Below, during a papal visit to Istanbul in 2014, the Grand Mufti shared the koran with the pope as they prayed together. Francis has said that true Islam is not violent despite extensive evidence to the contrary.
Francis’ years of liberal pandering toward Islam has made him a figure of ridicule, at least to Spencer, who used the latest papal misadventure in multi-faith diplomacy as an opportunity for comedic mockery.
Spencer’s calling Francis the “defender of Islam” may not be entirely complementary.
]]>The Pope of Islam, By Robert Spencer, Front Page, September 22, 2017
Pope Francis welcomes to the Vatican the head of a Muslim group tied to the financing of jihad terror.
As if he weren’t already committed enough to foolish false charity and willful ignorance regarding the jihad threat, Pope Francis on Wednesday met in the Vatican with Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, the secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL), a group that has been linked to the financing of jihad terror.
During the meeting, al-Issa thanked the Pope for his “fair positions” on what he called the “false claims that link extremism and violence to Islam.” In other words, he thanked the Pope for dissembling about the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which his group has been accused of financing, and for defaming other religions in an effort to whitewash Islam.
I don’t object to the Pope’s meeting this man. After all, Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But the meeting appears to have been a pointless feelgood session, probably featuring some sly dawah from al-Issa. According to Breitbart News, “the two men reportedly exchanged views on a number of ‘issues of common interest’ including peace and global harmony, and discussed cooperation on issues of peaceful coexistence and the spread of love.”
The spread of love. Yes, that’s what the Muslim World League is all about.
Nor is this the first time a Muslim leader has thanked the Pope for being so very useful. Last July, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar, thanked him for his “defense of Islam against the accusation of violence and terrorism.”
Has any other Pope of Rome in the history of Christianity ever been heralded as a “defender of Islam”?
Of course not. But the Catholic Church has come a long way since the days of Pope Callixtus III, who vowed in 1455 to “exalt the true Faith, and to extirpate the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet in the East.”
If time travel could be arranged and Pope Francis could run into Callixtus III, Callixtus could “expect a punch,” for Francis is not just a defender of Islam, but a defender of the Sharia death penalty for blasphemy: after Islamic jihadists murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who had drawn Muhammad, Francis obliquely justified the murders by saying that “it is true that you must not react violently, but although we are good friends if [an aide] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t make a toy out of the religions of others. These people provoke and then (something can happen). In freedom of expression there are limits.”
So for the Pope, murdering people for violating Sharia blasphemy laws is “normal,” and it isn’t terrorism for “Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist,” he said in a speech last February. “There are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and religions—and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger because they feed on hate and xenophobia.”
ISIS and other mass-murdering jihadists couldn’t ask for a better friend in the Vatican. Pope Francis refuses to [...]]]>
ISIS and other mass-murdering jihadists couldn’t ask for a better friend in the Vatican. Pope Francis refuses to identify Islam with its followers’ daily slaughter for allah, even though the religion’s scripture is full of it.
In response to the pope’s statement of Islamic innocence (just a few days after a French priest was murdered in his church!), jihad scholar Robert Spencer remarked:
The Pope is once again ignoring a simple distinction: while people of all faiths and backgrounds commit acts of violence, Islam is unique among world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system mandating warfare against unbelievers. Unless and until that is confronted, Muslims will continue to commit acts of violence against non-Muslims, including Christians. The Pope is betraying the Christians of the Middle East and the world, and all the victims of jihad violence, by repeating palpable falsehoods about the motivating ideology of attacks upon them, instead of confronting that ideology and calling upon Muslims to renounce and reform Islam’s doctrines of violence.
In addition, the pope has been personally targeted for a live-streamed beheading in St. Peter’s Square in the near future as part of ISIS’ schedule to defeat Christianity. Despite jihadists’ recent war on Christians in Iraq and other historic homelands in the Middle East, Pope Francis has recommended that Europe accept the Islamic invasion.
The pontiff’s attitude on the matter of Islam goes beyond naivete — whatever is he thinking?
Below, during a papal visit to Istanbul in 2014, 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.
Here’s a video of the pope’s interview to the press during the flight returning to Rome after a visit to Poland.
It’s also disturbing that Pope Francis blames terrorism on the poor economy and lack of jobs, rather than Islam’s commands to “slay [the infidels] wherever you find them” (4:89). As a man of faith, he should understand the power of belief, but he instead prattles the Marxist silliness that economics is the sole impetus for behavior.
]]>Pope Francis defends Muslims and blasts ‘Islam is NOT terrorism’, Express (UK), August 1, 2016
POPE Francis said yesterday it was wrong to identify Islam with terrorism and that social injustice and idolatry of money were among the prime causes of terrorism.
Speaking aboard the plane taking him back to Rome after a five-day trip to Poland, he said: “I think it is not right to identify Islam with terrorism.
“It is not right and it is not true.”
Francis was responding to a question about the killing on July 26 of an 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest by knife-wielding attackers who burst into a church service in western France, forced the priest to his knees and slit his throat.
The attack was claimed by ISIS.
He said: “I think that in nearly all religions there is always a small fundamentalist group.”
He then added: “We have them,” referring to Catholicism.
The Pope continued: “I don’t like to talk about Islamic violence because every day when I look at the papers I see violence here in Italy – someone killing his girlfriend, someone killing his mother-in-law. These are baptised Catholics.
If I speak of Islamic violence, I have to speak of Catholic violence. Not all Muslims are violent.”
He said there were various causes of terrorism.
The Pope said: “I know it dangerous to say this but terrorism grows when there is no other option and when money is made and it, instead of the person, is put at the centre of the world economy.
“That is the first form of terrorism. That is a basic terrorism against all humanity. Let’s talk about that.”
When he started the trip last week, Francis said the killing of the priest and a string of string of other attacks were proof the “world is at war” but that it was not caused by religion.
He told reporters on the plane that lack of economic opportunities for young people in Europe was also to blame for terrorism.
He said: “I ask myself how many young people that we Europeans have left devoid of ideals, who do not have work. Then they turn to drugs and alcohol or enlist in ISIS.”
Below, the pope welcomes his new Muslim neighbors, including photogenic kids.
The pope could have rescued some Middle Eastern Christians who are being genocided out of existence in their homeland of two millennia, but he didn’t. Perhaps the Muslims provided more opportunity for virtue display. But it is disturbing that even the pope doesn’t care about Christian survival in the place where it all began.
It’s doubtful that the pope’s ostentatious do-goodery will last long, however. The Vatican isn’t much of a place to raise kiddies, particularly diverse ones needing instruction from imams, and the selection of cruelly slaughtered halal food is slim to none. Of course, the families may never see the actual inside of the Vatican in this stage-managed media performance. Whatever the logistics, the three families will end up with Italy caring for them after the media has lost interest in the story. At that point, the pope could be considered an illegal alien smuggler, not a good descriptor for a man of his social standing.
Does the pope know that ISIS plans to conquer Rome (meaning the Vatican) by 2020? Providing for the care and feeding of a few Muslim families won’t let him off the hook. And the Islamic defeat of Rome includes a televised beheading of the pope in St. Peter’s Square, just so there won’t be any confusion about who has won. Remember, the conquest of the world and turning it Islamic has been the ultimate goal pursued these last 1400 years, and the hijrah (conquest via immigration) allowed by Merkel’s crazy open-borders just makes the subjugation project much easier.
The pope is just another political elite selling Europeans out to the barbarians.
]]>Pope Francis Brings 12 Muslim Refugees Back to Italy on Papal Plane, Breitbart.com, April 16, 2016
In a “gesture of welcome,” Pope Francis took three families of Syrian refugees with him in the papal plane on his return to Rome from the Greek island of Lesbos Saturday.
The Vatican said it will assume responsibility for the upkeep of the three families, and has enlisted the community of Sant’Egidio to provide the initial hospitality.
Two of the families come from Damascus, and the other from Deir Azzor, in the area occupied by the Islamic State, and all three families had their homes bombed during the Syrian civil war.
All the members of the three families are Muslims, and six of the 12 refugees are children.
According to papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, by bringing the refugees back on the papal plane, the Pope wished to make a “gesture of welcome regarding refugees,” and the Vatican Secretariat of State negotiated the transfer with the competent Greek and Italian authorities.
The Vatican specified that the three Syrian families were already in camps in Lesbos prior to March 20, when the agreement between the European Union and Turkey went into effect.
Earlier in the day, Pope Francis visited the Moria detention center, where some 3,000 people are awaiting decisions concerning their asylum status. The Pope was accompanied by two other religious leaders, the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew and the Greek Archbishop Ieronymos. The three men signed a joint declaration expressing their concern for Europe’s migrant crisis.
Despite assurances by the papal spokesman, who earlier this week stated that the Pope’s trip to Lesbos would be purely humanitarian and ecumenical, it is difficult to ignore the political edge in the joint declaration.
In the declaration, the religious leaders specifically “urge all countries to extend temporary asylum, to offer refugee status to those who are eligible, to expand their relief efforts and to work with all men and women of good will for a prompt end to the conflicts in course.”
The three men also offered public prayers for the victims of migration who have died attempting to reach other lands.
In his prayer, Pope Francis entreated God on behalf of “all the men, women and children who have died after leaving their homelands in search of a better life.”
Though many of their graves bear no name, he said, “to You each one is known, loved and cherished. May we never forget them, but honour their sacrifice with deeds more than words.”
Francis also prayed asked God to “wake us from the slumber of indifference, open our eyes to their suffering, and free us from the insensitivity born of worldly comfort and self-centredness.”
“Inspire us,” he said, “as nations, communities and individuals, to see that those who come to our shores are our brothers and sisters.”
“May we share with them the blessings we have received from Your hand,” he said.
But to my eye, the pope performing an Easter footwashing ritual meant to show humility in the Catholic style must look more [...]]]>
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.
How can I top a Daily Mail headline? From March 4:
The Pope says ‘it is a social fact’ that Europe is seeing an ‘Arab invasion’ — and it’s a GOOD thing
[...]]]>How can I top a Daily Mail headline? From March 4:
The Pope says ‘it is a social fact’ that Europe is seeing an ‘Arab invasion’ — and it’s a GOOD thing
Pope Francis described the influx of migrants into Europe as an ‘Arab invasion’ before explaining that the new arrivals will enhance Europe for the better.
The pontiff was giving a speech to an audience of French Christians when he reflected on Europe’s history of migration and the positive impact it has had on its culture today.
He described the migrant crisis as ‘a social fact’ before explaining the change will help Europe in the future by making it more multi-cultural, according to Bloomberg.
Below, during a papal visit to Istanbul in 2014, 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.
In earlier times, European leaders like Charles Martel could grasp the concept of “enemy” — particularly when connected to the continuing war of Islam since its inception against western civilization.
Now the idiot tropes of the left — anti-war, anti-“racism” — have turned elite brains to mush. The people have awakened to the danger, though: the initial happy talk of refugee rescue promulgated by the liberal press failed in the face of the criminal behavior of actual newcomers, or “Rapefugees” as they are now often known.
But if the pope doesn’t care about the survival of Europe in a recognizable form, he might think about his personal longevity, since there is a big jihad target painted on his cassock. As Islam scholar Robert Spencer has pointed out, a major goal of Islam, as instructed by Mohammed, is to conquer Rome, meaning the Vatican. In fact, media-hip ISIS hopes to live-stream the beheading of the pope in St. Peter’s Square. Muslims conquered Constantinople (the eastern capital of Christianity) in 1453, and Rome is on jihadis’ to-do list for the near future. For details, see my 2015 blog: Robert Spencer: A Goal of ISIS Is to Conquer Rome in Five Years.
Despite the immediate horrific threat that Islam poses to the West, the pope worries about a shrinking population in Europe even if the empty cradles are filled by Islamic babies rather than Christian, according to DW:
]]>Pope: ‘We can speak of an Arab invasion’ of Europe, Deutsch Welle, March 4, 2016
Europe risks becoming an “empty place” by forgetting its history and neglecting cultural exchange, said Pope Francis. The pontiff lashed out at the rise of populism, saying ideologies are the “poison of politics.”
Pope Francis said Europe must not neglect its historical roots of cultural exchange in reference to the wave of migration from the Middle East to the EU, in comments published on Friday by the Vatican’s official daily Italian-language newspaper “L’Ossevatore Romano.”
“If Europe wants to rejuvenate itself, it must rediscover its cultural roots … But forgetting its own history, Europe weakens itself. And that’s when it risks becoming an empty place,” the pope told Jean-Pierre Denis, editor-in-chief of the French magazine “La Vie.”
“Today, we can speak of an Arab invasion. It is a social fact,” the pope said in response to a question on why he believes Europe risks becoming an “empty place.” He immediately added that anyone looking for a “‘great change’ — those dearest to the far-right — will remain disappointed.”
“How many invasions has Europe experienced in the course of its history? It has always been able to overcome them; moving forward and finding itself better through the exchange between cultures,” the pope said, in an apparent reference to Europe’s Renaissance, which was partially fostered through the preservation of Greek philosophical works by Muslim scholars in Spain and elsewhere in the Arab world.
EU member states have struggled to form a comprehensive strategy to handle an influx of asylum seekers and migrants – many from war-torn countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa – that saw more than 1 million people arriving in the 28-nation bloc in 2015.
Ex-Soviet satellite states, including Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, have told Brussels that they refuse to take in more asylum seekers under an EU plan to relocate refugees according to a quota system.
“Sometimes I wonder where you’ll find a [French Foreign Minister Robert] Schumann or [German Chancellor Konrad] Adenauer, these great founders of the European Union,” the pope said.
Countering populism, extremism
The pope responded to the rise of far-right populism in Europe, which has given way to such movements as Germany’s “anti-Islamization” PEGIDA as well as anti-immigrant political parties, by stating that ideologies are the “poison of politics.”“When a country closes itself to a healthy notion of politics, it ends up being a prisoner hostage to ideological colonization. Ideologies are the poison of politics. You have the right be right or left. But ideology takes away freedom.
“If you want to avoid everyone turning towards extremes, you must nurture friendship and the pursuit of the common good, beyond political affiliations.”
Francis also announced that the Vatican is preparing a meeting with officials from al-Azhar University in Cairo, known as the Muslim world’s most prominent institution of Sunni thought.
Funny how the professional do-gooders regard America as the world’s flophouse and full-service social service agency. Meanwhile, the influx of millions of low-skilled oppression-accepting foreigners harms our own poor people the most. But the pope doesn’t care about American poor; job #1 for him is virtue display with a thick religion overlay.
Anyway, America is a traditionally Protestant nation (being diminished, as a result of immigration) and the pope is all about boosting the welfare of his people the catholics by encouraging them to move north. And he wouldn’t mind if the US becomes more catholic as a result.
Cassock elites believe national law and sovereignty take a back seat to church tenets. Those supremacist beans were spilled by border priest Michael Seifert when he observed, “Any family in economic need has a right to immigrate, that’s our posture, if a family is hungry and the family needs work, then society should provide a way for people to do that.”
Meanwhile, polling shows that catholic parishioners agree with the rest of Americans that the government should be doing more to bring illegal immigration under control.
On Thursday, the big front-page photo on several major newspapers, including the New York Times (shown below), Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, was of the pope endorsing open borders to benefit poor people to the south. Those emotional images will stick with illiterate third worlders, giving them permission to illegally enter America and steal citizens’ jobs.
Interestingly, the pope denounced corruption in Mexico during his trip, yet he wants America to admit millions of criminals to our country. Since the DoJ reported several years ago that Mexican drug gangs operate in more than 200 US cities, we appear to have plenty of Mexican crime diversity already.
As it happens, Mexico is rich, consistently ranking around #15 in world GDP, and could well afford to take better care of its citizens. But it pretends to be poor, because the position offers advantages for begging in Washington.
CNN gushed with foretgner love in its coverage:
CNN HOST WOLF BLITZER: He’s now being taken to the border fence and is getting ready to offer a very, very special blessing. This is a moment that will have great significance along the US/Mexico border for Pope Francis as he walked over there. You see the cross. I want to bring in Father Edward Beck, our CNN religious commentator, the host of the Sunday mass. Explain the significance, Father Beck, of this moment in the pope’s trip to Mexico.
PRIEST EDWARD BECK: Well, it kind of is the hallmark of his whole papacy thus far, Wolf: immigration, welcoming the stranger, the refugee. Here on this border of the Rio Grande, where so many lives have been lost, Mexican lives, of those fleeing to the United States, this pope is offering a blessing for those on both sides of that border. And it is symbolic because he is standing there in prayer right now saying, we have to do better. It’s not about chastising and punishing people for fleeing to something more prosperous, something more safe. So he is saying that by being here right now and offering this blessing that we are all strangers. Remember when he came and spoke before Congress he said, I am the son of immigrants. We were all once foreigners in a strange land, and this pope thinks that we need to welcome those who flee political and social oppression.
That’s a strange kind of religion, where third-world poor stealing jobs from first-world poor is considered virtuous. Maybe it’s the Marxist liberation theology seeping through.
CBS reported recently that US black unemployment was nearly twice that of whites in the final quarter of 2015, and more than 90 million working-age citizens are not participating in the workforce. So it’s not like there are spare jobs laying around for illegal alien pests. The jobless recovery continues, even if pundits have stopped talking about it.
If Mexicans et al put half the energy they invest in illegal immigration into political reform at home, a lot might be accomplished. But it’s easier for them to play the victim and sniff out American jobs and welfare offices.
CNN also promoted the papist view that the US should be a world rescuer of those facing “forced migration” and forget about the mean-spirited national sovereignty stuff intended to protect the American people.
]]>At Mexican-U.S. border, Pope delivers a stinging critique of both countries, By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor, CNN, February 18, 2016
For much of his five-day trip in Mexico, Pope Francis played the role of friendly pastor, smiling for selfies, kissing babies and encouraging the youth not to fall prey to the drug trade.
On Wednesday, Francis unleashed another aspect of his complex public persona: The disappointed prophet who excoriates world powers for mistreating the poor and marginalized.
Celebrating Mass in Ciudad Juarez, a city just across the border from the United States, Francis delivered a stinging critique of leaders on both sides of the fence, calling the “forced migration” of thousands of Central Americans a “human tragedy” and “humanitarian crisis.”
“Being faced with so many legal vacuums,” the Pope said during his homily before a congregation of more than 200,000 people, “they get caught up in a web that ensnares and always destroys the poorest.”
“Injustice is radicalized in the young,” the Pope continued. “They are ‘cannon fodder,’ persecuted and threatened when they try to flee the spiral of violence and the hell of drugs.”
The Bible readings at the Mass, which are tied to the church calendar, told the story of Jonah, another angry prophet. It was the kind of coincidence that a man of Francis’ faith might consider the work of a watchful God. The Bible passages set up the Pope to blister injustices in Mexico and indifference in the United States, casting both countries as modern-day Ninevehs.
‘No more death! No more exploitation!’
“Go and tell them that injustice has infected their way of seeing the world,” the Pope said, describing Jonah’s mission to rouse the city of Nineveh from the morass of moral decay. “Go and help them to understand that by the way they treat each other, ordering and organizing themselves, they are only creating death and destruction, suffering and oppression.”
In case the message was lost on his audience, the Pope drove the point home:
“Let us together ask our God for the gift of conversion, the gift of tears, let us ask him to give us open hearts like the Ninevites, open to his call heard in the suffering faces of countless men and women. No more death! No more exploitation!”
Before the Mass, Francis prayed and blessed a makeshift memorial to migrants who have tried to cross into the United States. He then blessed a group of about 400 people across the river in El Paso. Included among these “Francis VIPs” were families seeking asylum in the United States, according to El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz.
It was a grand geopolitical gesture from the Pope’s political playbook, mirroring his prayer at the wall separating Palestinian territories and Israel in 2014. It also thrust Francis into the polarized debates over immigration in both the United States and Mexico.
Vatican responds to Trump’s charge
Even before the Pope arrived in Mexico, GOP front-runner Donald Trump called Francis a “very political person” and suggested he was a tool of the Mexican government.
The Vatican scoffed at the latter charge but pleaded guilty to the former.
“The Pope, with his moral and spiritual ministry, may have a political impact. That is clear to the whole world by now, ” Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday night when asked about Trump’s accusations.
Look at Francis’ role in encouraging renewed relations between the United States and Cuba, for example, the spokesman said, adding that the Pope has also encouraged Europeans to care for the refugees at their borders.
Trump, arguing that immigrants are bringing drugs and crime across the southern U.S. border, has pledged to build a big wall to keep them out.
Bishop Daniel Flores, who has been traveling with Francis during his five-day trip in Mexico, said the central themes of the Pope’s sermon and papacy are the same: a call to conversion. “No one is exempt from this; it is addressed to everyone: government leaders, politicians, bishops, clergy, young people, families, prisoners, business leaders.”
It is unclear, though, whether American Catholics or politicians will heed the Pope’s call. GOP candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, who are Catholic, have openly disagreed with Francis on the environment and may be anxious to align themselves with his stance on immigration, too.
Meanwhile, half of Catholics in the United States say they agree with Francis on that issue, according to a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute. But a majority of conservative Catholics (54%) say that Trump, whose signature issue is buttressing the border between the United States and Mexico, would make a “good or great” president, a Pew poll found.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, was one of thousands of Catholics who gathered in El Paso to watch the Pope bless the memorial and celebrate Mass in Juarez.
“I hope that every single politician takes note of this trip and thinks of it before they take action,” Pimentel said. “I hope they consider the dignity of all people.”
An exuberant welcome
While the Pope’s Mass on the border was the political highpoint of his trip to Mexico, for the most part, Francis’ speeches were notably apolitical. He condemned corruption and drug cartels, but the deeply unpopular Mexican government escaped with hardly a scratch.
As he did in the United States and elsewhere, the Pope encouraged his huge audiences to adopt more merciful approaches to the poor, elderly and the young, but offered no policy prescriptions.
Still, his agenda spoke volumes. He went to the heart of the cartel’s dark territory in Morelia, Michoacan, and told the young crowd that Jesus wants them to be disciples, not “hitmen.” And in Chiapas, in the country’s far south, where many people have indigenous heritage, he said the world needs their culture and asked for forgiveness for those who had contaminated their lands.
There, and nearly everywhere Francis went, the crowds’ response approached rapturous. It was “an overwhelming outpouring of spontaneous affection,” said Flores.
Many Mexicans cried in his presence; others cheered like a soccer crowd, “Viva el Papa!” and “You can see it, you can feel it, the Pope is here!” At times the crowd was too exuberant, as when Francis was pulled down on top of a boy in a wheelchair.
At the end of the Mass in Juarez on Wednesday, the Pope thanked Mexicans for opening their doors and their lives to him.
“At times I felt like weeping to see so much hope in a people who are suffering so much,” Francis said.
It’s a favorite theme for him. He recently called upon European Catholics to [...]]]>
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.
By “Mexicanization” he meant the spread of drug gangs and violent crime. In [...]]]>
By “Mexicanization” he meant the spread of drug gangs and violent crime. In response, Mexican authorities promised Monday to send a firmly worded letter protesting his telling the truth about their crime-ridden country.
Pope Francis is generous with other people’s countries. In 2013 he greeted fleebag Africans on the Italian island of Lampedusa and invited them to Europe.
Funny, Pope Francis wouldn’t mind turning the United States into a diverse criminal barrio filled with Mexicans. He routinely urges a more liberal approach from the US regarding our borders and sovereignty. Last summer he complained about the “racist and xenophobic attitudes” of Americans when the border was being flooded with tens of thousands of Central American illegals.
Around the same time, the Pope railed against “people who only see in immigration a source of illegality, social conflict and violence.”
In January, he said he might enter the United States across the Mexican border as “a beautiful gesture of brotherhood and support for immigrants.”
But when it comes to his beloved country of Argentina, invasive criminal Mexicans are a problem to be stopped.
]]>Mexico Complains About Remarks Attributed To Pope Over Drug Image, Reuters, February 23 2015
(Reuters) – Mexico said on Monday it would send a letter to the Vatican to complain about remarks attributed to Pope Francis about the risk of Argentina suffering a criminal “Mexicanization” due to the spread of drug gangs there.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade said his government had expressed concern that the country was being “stigmatized” as a land of drug traffickers in an email attributed to Francis published in Argentina over the weekend.
“We had a meeting with the (papal) nuncio and we will indeed send a note, and what worries us is that the drug trafficking challenge is a shared challenge. It’s a challenge that Mexico is undertaking massive efforts on,” Meade said in Mexico City.
Published by Argentine human rights group La Alameda, the email showed the Argentine-born pope making apparent reference to the risk of Mexican-style drug violence reaching Argentina.
“Hopefully we’re in time to avoid the Mexicanization. I was talking to some Mexican bishops and it’s a terrible situation,” the organization quoted the pontiff as saying in a message sent to Gustavo Vera, the head of La Alameda.
A spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico said she was still trying to confirm whether the pope had made the comments. An official at the Mexican Foreign Ministry said he believed the papal nuncio had confirmed their authenticity.
Vera said the remarks were made by the pope during an exchange the two were having on crime.
“In the letter he simply gives expression to a longstanding concern about drug trafficking getting worse and taking root inside (Argentina),” Vera told Argentine radio.
More than 100,000 people have died in drug cartel violence in Mexico since the start of 2007. The September 2014 abduction and apparent massacre of 43 Mexican students by police in league with a drug gang seriously embarrassed the current government.
Mexican politicians have long argued that the problem is the shared responsibility of Mexico and its neighbors given that the United States is a massive marketplace for illicit drugs.
For a taste, here is the [...]]]>
For a taste, here is the final paragraph:
“Dear migrants and refugees! You have a special place in the heart of the Church, and you help her to enlarge her heart and to manifest her motherhood towards the entire human family. Do not lose your faith and hope! Let us think of the Holy Family during the flight in Egypt: Just as the maternal heart of the Blessed Virgin and the kind heart of Saint Joseph kept alive the confidence that God would never abandon them, so in you may the same hope in the Lord never be wanting. I entrust you to their protection and I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing”.
You might think that the Pope would focus on endangered Christians, who are being removed from the Middle East by murderous Islamic jihad, demanding that non-Muslims “Convert or die.” But no, he apparently believes that all refugees should be welcomed in the West, including hostile Muslims who promise to destroy Christianity and the other non-Islamic religions.
Below, the Pope’s first official trip outside the Vatican was to the island of Lampedusa (long besieged by thousands of demanding foreigners), where he welcomed Africans to Europe.
As noted here earlier, refugees are largely created by Muslim wars: World Refugee Day: Jihad on the March. There is no reason to infect the West further with the Islamic pathology of violence and supremacism. Muslim refugees should go to other Islamic societies.
The Pope has written that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” Perhaps he should stick to interpreting Catholicism, since the Koran is full of admonitions to Muslims that they commit violence on infidels who will not submit.
Nevertheless, the Pope recommends a borderless world, straight out of the liberal playbook.
]]>Pope calls for ‘globalization of charity’ to protect migrants, Catholic News, September 23, 2014
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis called for the “globalization of charity” through an international network to fight human trafficking and ensure the rights of migrants and refugees.
The pope’s words appeared in his annual message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, which in 2015 will be observed Jan. 18. The Vatican released the pope’s message, “Church Without Frontiers, Mother to All,” Sept. 23.
“Large numbers of people are leaving their homelands, with a suitcase full of fears and desires, to undertake a hopeful and dangerous trip in search of more humane living conditions,” the pope wrote. “Such migration gives rise to suspicion and hostility, even in ecclesial communities, prior to any knowledge of the migrants’ lives or their stories of persecution and destitution.”
Pope Francis called on all to honor the “biblical commandment of welcoming with respect and solidarity the stranger in need.”
“Jesus Christ is always waiting to be recognized in migrants and refugees, in displaced persons and in exiles, and through them he calls us to share our resources, and occasionally to give up something of our acquired riches,” he wrote.
But individual and even national efforts to help migrants are insufficient, the pope wrote.
“Migration movements, however, are on such a scale that only a systematic and active cooperation between states and international organizations can be capable of regulating and managing such movements effectively,” he wrote.
According to the United Nations, there were 232 million international migrants in 2013, representing a rise of 50 percent since 1990.
At a news conference to present the pope’s message, Bishop Joseph Kalathiparambil, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, said that in 2013 the number of refugees, asylum seekers and displaced persons exceeded 50 million for the first time since World War II.
“A more decisive and constructive action is required, one which relies on a universal network of cooperation, based on safeguarding the dignity and centrality of every human person,” Pope Francis wrote. “This will lead to greater effectiveness in the fight against the shameful and criminal trafficking of human beings, the violation of fundamental rights, and all forms of violence, oppression and enslavement.”
“It is necessary to respond to the globalization of migration with the globalization of charity and cooperation,” he wrote.
Pope Francis has made migration a signature issue of his pontificate. In July 2013, less than four months after his election as pope, he traveled to the southern Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, a major entry point for undocumented immigrants to Europe, to commemorate those who had died attempting to cross the sea from North Africa.
The pope has met with international refugees in Rome and, during a May visit to the Holy Land, in Jordan. He has also frequently denounced human trafficking, calling it a “crime against humanity.”