UNITED STATES
Daily Kos
by Betty Clermont
On the July 28 flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro’s World Youth Day and in a widely publicized interview in September with a Jesuit magazine, when asked for his opinion on abortion and same-sex marriage, Pope Francis said his position was identical to that of the Church. “I am a son of the Church,” he explained.
He is a son of the Church as restructured by his two predecessors, Pope John Paul II and his head of doctrine, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.
Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was promoted to bishop, archbishop and cardinal by Pope John Paul II who preached: “The globalized economy must be analyzed in the light of the principles of social justice, respecting the preferential option for the poor who must be allowed to take their place in such an economy, and the requirements of the international common good.” John Paul condemned, “Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide…whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind.”
Yet he backed Latin American dictators and worked with the CIA, Reagan and right-wing Catholic groups to counter the actions of progressive clerics in Latin America. The CIA thought Wojtyla would be “a perfect vehicle for U.S. foreign policy.”
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope by a College of Cardinals comprised entirely of men appointed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Benedict taught: “Democracy will attain its full actualization only when every person and each people have access to the primary goods (life, food, water, health care, education, work, and the certainty of their rights) through an ordering of internal and international relations that assures each person of the possibility of participating in them.” And “Commitment to promoting effective social justice in international relations demands of each one an awareness that the goods of creation are destined for all, and that in the world community economies must be oriented toward the sharing of these goods, their lasting use, and the fair division of the benefits that derive from them.”
Yet when polls showed a tie between Pres. George W. Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004, he sent a letter to the U.S. episcopate instructing the bishops to deny communion to Kerry. After favoring Gore in 2000, Catholics voted 52 percent for Bush versus 47 percent for Kerry. “Throughout the 2004 campaign, Rove maintained that, if Bush won the Catholic vote, he would be reelected. Rove was right.”
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