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“Senator Sanders could suspend his visit to Vatican”

By Betty Clermont
Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
April 12, 2016

https://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/senator-sanders-could-suspend-his-visit-to-vatican/

An Italian news agency specializing in Vatican affairs reported yesterday that “the senator, after the controversy, may terminate the visit and return at a better time.” The “controversy” refers to “interference (by the Vatican) in the US presidential campaign, especially a few days of the primary important in New York State.”

“For some analysts, Sander’s visit to the Vatican, without being received by the Holy Father, may damage his image.” Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, had made it clear “that His Holiness doesn’t plan to give the senator an audience.” In fact, other than Pres. Obama, Pope Francis has never met in private with any US Democrat.

If Bernie Sanders does cancel his visit, this should be wonderful news for progressives.

Jews

Pope Francis met with the leader of an anti-Semitic group on April 1. “Hard-core, anti-Semitic” is how the Southern Poverty Law Center described the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The Simon Wiesenthal Center named SSPX as influential within the French far-right, anti-Semitic party. The SSPX is a priestly society which currently has no canonical status in the Church ever since its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ordained bishops without the consent of Pope John Paul II. Yet Pope Francis initiated a process of “full reconciliation” with the SSPX in 2013.

In his first act as pontiff, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras as head of his new “Council of Cardinals.” In addition to supporting the 2009 military coup against the constitutionally-elected and progressive against Pres. Manuel Zelaya, Rodriguez Maradiaga was referred to as a “notorious anti-Semite” by Alan M. Dershowitz.

Women

“Abortion is to throw someone out in order to save another. That’s what the Mafia does,” Pope Francis said during his Feb. 16 in-flight interview. In his much-touted encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si,  Pope Francis asked,  “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?” On the topic of birth control in Laudato Si: “Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate,” the pope wrote.  He also denounced international organizations for making economic assistance to developing countries “contingent on certain policies of ‘reproductive health.’”

LGBTQ Persons

In the just released “apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (Latin for Joy of Love) On Love in the Family” Pope Francis included paragraphs on “Gender Ideology” and “Homosexuality and Homosexual Unions.” In the former he wrote about the ideology of gender that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.  This ideology leads to educational programs and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time. It is a source of concern that some ideologies of this sort, which seek to respond to what are at times understandable aspirations, manage to assert themselves as absolute and unquestionable, even dictating how children should be raised.”

On “Homosexuality and Homosexual Unions,” Pope Francis wrote: “In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, ‘as for proposals to place unions between homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’ It is unacceptable ‘that local Churches should be subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies should make financial aid to poor countries dependent on the introduction of laws to establish ‘marriage’ between persons of the same sex.’”

Rightwing Pope/Vatican

Pope Francis called critics protesting the appointment of a new bishop in Chile, who has been accused of covering up sexual abuse crimes committed by priests, “lefties” in a video message.

Difficult to believe three years later, but when Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was first elected pope, initially the media focused on his cooperation with the barbaric junta which waged a “Dirty War” against citizens who were even suspected of being left-wing, killing an estimated 30,000 Argentines. The Vatican press office attributed these reports to “left-wing anticlerical elements.”

Pope Francis packed the Vatican with vulture capitalists

Among those appointed by Pope Francis to manage and prosper his assets – securities, commercial real estate and bank accounts – “by a conservative estimate” to be around 15-17 billion euro,  are Peter Sutherland, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs International and Michael Hintze, former head of UK trading at Goldman Sachs. For a list of the other vulture capitalists appointed by Pope Francis in Vatican finance, please see here.




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