Here's the headline...
In his new book, Pope Francis backs the George Floyd protests and blasts COVID-19 skeptics
Mostv of the rest of the article, brown highlights mine.;
" By ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOV. 23, 202012:12 PM
ROME — Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and media organizations that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican’s coronavirus lockdown.
In “Let Us Dream,” Francis also criticizes populist politicians who whip up rallies in ways reminiscent of the 1930s, and the hypocrisy of “rigid” conservative Catholics who support them. But he also criticizes the forceful downing of historic statues during protests for racial equality this year as a misguided attempt to “purify the past.”
The 150-page book, due out Dec. 1, was ghost-written by Francis’ English-language biographer, Austen Ivereigh, and at times the prose and emphasis seem almost more Ivereigh’s than Francis’. That’s somewhat intentional — Ivereigh said Monday he hoped a more colloquial-English-speaking pope would resonate with English-speaking readers and believers.
At its core, “Let Us Dream” aims to outline Francis’ vision of a more economically and environmentally just post-coronavirus world where the poor, the elderly and the weak aren’t left on the margins and the wealthy aren’t consumed only with profits.
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But it also offers new personal insights into the 83-year-old Argentine pope and his sense of humor.
At one point, Francis reveals that after he offered in 2012 to retire as archbishop of Buenos Aires when he turned 75, he planned to finally finish the thesis he never completed on the 20th century German intellectual Romano Guardini.
“But in March 2013, I was transferred to another diocese,” he deadpans. Francis was elected pope, and bishop of Rome, on March 13, 2013.
The publisher said the book was the first written by a pope during a major world crisis, and Ivereigh said it was done as a response to the coronavirus and the lockdown. For Francis, the pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to imagine and plan for a more socially just world.
LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 17: During the global coronavirus pandemic Ana Ramos is being tested for covid19 in Tom Bradley international at LAX on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020 in Los Angeles, CA. Los Angeles International Airport started issuing molecular or PCR tests this week and has plans to quickly expand the program in order to help detect coronavirus and slow its spread. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles )
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At times, it seems he is directing that message squarely at the United States, as Trump’s administration winds down four years of “America first” policies that have excluded migrants from Muslim countries and diminished U.S. reliance on multilateral diplomacy. Without identifying the U.S. or Trump by name, Francis singles out Christian-majority countries where nationalist-populist leaders seek to defend Christianity from perceived enemies.
“Today, listening to some of the populist leaders we now have, I am reminded of the 1930s, when some democracies collapsed into dictatorships seemingly overnight,” Francis writes. “We see it happening again now in rallies where populist leaders excite and harangue crowds, channeling their resentments and hatreds against imagined enemies to distract from the real problems.”
(So..he likes socialism more than populism..no surprise there)
People fall prey to such rhetoric out of fear, not true religious conviction, he writes. Such “superficially religious people vote for populists to protect their religious identity, unconcerned that fear and hatred of the other cannot be reconciled with the Gospel.”
He doesn't seem to understand the depth of the gospel,here)
A pedestrian walks past a sign in San Francisco on Saturday.
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Francis addressed the killing of Floyd, a Black man whose death at the knee of a white policeman set off protests this year across the United States. Referring to Floyd by name, Francis said: “Abuse is a gross violation of human dignity that we cannot allow and which we must continue to struggle against.”
But he warned that protests could be manipulated and decried the attempt to erase history by downing statues of U.S. Confederate leaders. A better way, he said, is to debate the past through dialogue.
“Amputating history can make us lose our memory,” he writes, “which is one of the few remedies we have against repeating the mistakes of the past.
Turning to the pandemic, Francis blasted people who protested anti-virus restrictions “as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!”
(Personal freedom is part & parcel of being an American, but people raised elsewhere, sometimes don't get it!
He accused some in the church and Catholic media of being part of the problem.
“You’ll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd, or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education,” he writes. “They turned into a cultural battle what was in truth an effort to ensure the protection of life.”
(So, B L M didn't riot nor Burn-Loot-Murder ?)
He praised journalists who reported on how the pandemic was affecting the poorest. But he took a broad swipe at unnamed media organizations that “used this crisis to persuade people that foreigners are to blame, that the coronavirus is little more than a little bout of flu, and that restrictions necessary for people’s protection amount to an unjust demand of an interfering state.”
(...But Frannie, do you think Foreigners are not to blame? Have you considered the Chinese Communist Party?)
“There are politicians who peddle these narratives for their own gain,” he writes. “But they could not succeed without some media creating and spreading them.”
(omitted here, .....he talks at length of a time when he had respiratory problems, years ago !)
................and that while in Cordoba he read a 37-volume “History of the Popes.”
“Once you know that papal history, there’s not that much that goes on in the Vatican Curia and the church today that can shock you,” he writes.
Francis repeated his call for a universal basic income, for welcoming migrants and for what he called the three L’s that everyone needs: land, lodging and labor.
(Obviously, a "one world government" guy..you know where that puts him)
“We need to set goals for our business sector that — without denying its importance — look beyond shareholder value to other kinds of values that save us all: community, nature and meaningful work,” he writes.
(...Oh well...)
