UNITED STATES
The Open Taberbacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on May 11, 2014 by Betty Clermont
Almost unknown outside of Argentina, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was named the fourth “Most Powerful Person in the World/People Who Rule the World” by Forbes seven months after his election as pope. Five months later, another business publication, Fortune, named him the “World’s Greatest Leader.” Three of the four other top “rulers of the word” have already been to the Vatican to pay him homage: Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel. Only Xi Jinping has not yet made the pilgrimage but literally dozens of other heads-of-state have done so and have strengthened their diplomatic ties to the Holy See.
This leap from obscurity to global power was accomplished by the same corporate media complicit in shifting the wealth of the world’s richest nation into the pockets of the 1%. They selectively reported when Bergoglio looked and talked like a moderate populist. They did not tell us about Bergoglio’s compliance with Argentina’s military junta, his disgraceful history on child sex abuse nor his advocacy of right-wing politics. (Also here, here and here.)
And even though progressives know that the Religious Right was created by the neocons to facilitate this takeover, that the Catholic episcopate is an enthusiastic adjunct of the plutocracy, and that the men who elected Bergoglio were appointed by the same popes as the Obama-bashing, misogynist and homophobic U.S. bishops, we were as taken in by the “incense-smoke and mirrors” as the rest of the populace. We not only accepted without question the corporate media’s careful reporting but also showed no interest in Bergoglio’s papal appointments of men with backgrounds and worldviews at polar opposites to his constructed image. (Also, here and here.)
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