One of the images of archbishop Bergoglio, an Argentinian born of Italian parents, was showing the archbishop kneeling on stage in front of “men of lesser status.” The picture was published by Cabildo, a conservative Catholic journal, with the caption “apostata.”
Self-described as a “callejero,” the Jesuit priest frequently visited the ghetto and rode the subway, a “wanderer” in search of lost souls. He was made bishop in 1992 and cardinal in 2001.
Massimo Franco, a Roman author, explained his meteoric rise. “His election arose from a trauma – from the sudden (and for nearly six centuries, unprecedented) resignation of the sitting pope, Benedict XVI, and from the mounting sentiment among more progressive cardinals that the hoary and Eurocentric mind-set of the Holy See was rotting the Catholic Church from within.”
The beautiful Catholic Churches in Europe are rather empty of parishioners on most days; they are fabulous museums where tourists admire the icons, the tombs of the famous statesmen and former popes, statues, and reliquaries with a sense of reverence, admiration, appreciation, and awe. Occasionally some tourists do pray.
Robert Draper reported that Pope Francis does not wear a bulletproof vest because, Francis told his friend, Norberto Saracco, “The Lord has put me here. He’ll have to look out for me.”
Highly independent, Pope Francis accompanied a friend to the elevator at the end of a visit so that, he joked, … I can be sure you don’t take anything with you.” Regarding his independent spirit, Robert Draper quoted the Vatican spokesman, “In a sense, this is positive, because in the past there were criticisms that someone had too much power over the pope. They cannot say this is the case now.”
Changes in the Vatican happen with any new pope. But Ramiro de la Serna, Franciscan priest from Buenos Aires said, “I believe we haven’t yet seen the real changes. And I also believe we haven’t seen the real resistance yet either.”
Uncomfortable with the Swiss Guards following him everywhere for his own safety, Draper writes that the pope has eventually “resigned to their near-constant presence.” Bemoaning the fact that he cannot walk the streets of Rome like he used to walk in the streets of Buenos Aires, he feels “penned in.”
Pope Francis admits that he never follows his impulses because “the first answer that comes to me is usually wrong,” he said.
People have criticized the pope for embracing an imam, Omar Abboud, after praying with him and the rabbi Skorka at the Western Wall.
Graciously, Pope Francis gives sage advice to engaged couples. “The perfect family doesn’t exist, nor is there a perfect husband or a perfect wife, and let’s not talk about the perfect mother-in-law! It’s just us sinners.” In response to a question about gay priests, Draper reported that the pope had said, “Who am I to judge?”
The pope seems to be shaking the Vatican and revolutionizing the world. Draper believes that “This would appear to be the pope’s mission: to ignite a revolution inside the Vatican and beyond its walls, without overturning a host of long-held precepts.” He quotes la Serna, the pope’s Argentinian friend, “He won’t change doctrine. What he will do is return the church to its true doctrine – the one it has forgotten, the one that puts man back in the center. By putting the suffering of man, and his relationship with God, back in the center, these harsh attitudes toward homosexuality, divorce, and other things will start to change.”
His climate change encyclical and the invitation to address the U.S. Congress in the fall are evidence that he is hugely successful. He has inserted himself into the global warming debacle now turned into a veritable industry of climate change, a wealth redistribution scheme to combat poverty around the globe, and an attempt to control every facet of our lives through environmentalism, led by the United Nations with its many organizations staffed by third world bureaucrats and developed world socialists/Marxists.
In late July 2015, sixty environmentally-friendly mayors from cities like Boston, Boulder, New York City, San Francisco, Oslo, Stockholm, New Orleans, Birmingham (Alabama), Vancouver, Libreville (Gabon), Siquirres (Costa Rica), and Kochi (India) met for a two-day conference in Vatican City to pledge to the pope to reduce global warming and to help the urban poor deal with the onslaught of global warming which seems to affect them disproportionately while the rest of “the working class” are experiencing cooler temperatures due to seasonal changes.
These mayors belong to the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance and have committed themselves to reducing CO2 emissions by “at least 80 percent by 2050.” Gov. Jerry Brown of California is the leader, having “enacted the toughest greenhouse gas emission standards in North America.”
At the conclusion of the two-day conference, mayors were also asked to sign a declaration against slavery and human trafficking.
Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver signed the declaration that states “human-induced climate change is a scientific reality and its effective control is a moral imperative for humanity.” So the “climatism” rhetoric has changed now from “consensus science is settled” to “human imperative.”
Mayor William Bell of Birmingham, Alabama, discussed segregation as he experienced it, a “close-cousin to slavery,” he said. He was elated to follow the pope’s call to end all forms of modern-day slavery.
Oslo’s mayor Stian Berger Rosland was cheered by his colleagues when he announced that he was “the first Catholic mayor of Oslo since the Reformation.”
Monica Fein of Argentina’s Mercociudades (Network of cities in Latin America) stated her goal, “We want sustainable development, without excluding the extremely poor” and “We fundamentally want to leave our children and future generations with a planet that isn’t contaminated.”
Madrid’s leftist mayor, Manuela Carmena, stated that sexual slavery occurs in the world because “society has not been educated enough about sexuality” and prostitution exists. The mayors heard the testimony of two Mexican women who were victims of modern-day slavery.
San Francisco mayor, Edwin Lee, pledged to “completely phase out the use of petroleum diesel” in its city’s vehicle fleet and replace them with renewable diesel by the end of 2015.
The New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landrieu, warned about environmental degradation, citing the case of New Orleans and its Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, including the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His city supplies one-quarter of all the seafood produced in the U.S. and more oil and gas to the U.S. than Saudi Arabia. “But that economic benefit comes at a cost,” he said.
Mayor Chammany of Kochi talked about the Indian caste system, “one of the worst forms of slavery known to man.”
The Mayor of Stockholm stated that the 2015 Paris conference must “exclude fossil fuels as an option and just focus on long-term sustainable energy sources.” Mayor Karin Wanngaard proudly announced that 75 percent of her city’s public transportation runs on renewable energy. Her goal is to make Stockholm fossil-fuel free by 2040.
The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, promised to reduce New York City’s emissions 40 percent by 2030.
Jerry Brown, the governor of California had very harsh words for climate skeptics – they are “seeking to falsify the scientific record” in the process of trying to “bamboozle” the public with their propaganda, putting “troglodytes” in office rather than environmentally-responsible leaders. These bamboozlers try to convince scientists, politicians, and the public that global warming is a fraud. The climate change skeptics are “deniers of the obvious science.” I am not sure what the definition of “obvious science” is, it must be a close cousin to consensus science, certainly not based on fact.
Robertson said that “Vancouver is among a group of cities focused on
eliminating fossil fuels and shifting towards 100 percent renewable energy.” That will be interesting to watch.
The Vatican tried to connect climate change with human trafficking by claiming that global warming is responsible for creating “environmental refugees” who flee their homes because of drought or other climate-caused natural disasters. This begs the question, was climate change responsible for slavery in Egypt, in the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, Africa, or modern slaves in Islamic cultures?
The Paris climate negotiations in December (Who would have thought that humans could modify climate and negotiate it?) will have a final declaration that states, among other things, that “human-induced climate change is a scientific reality and its effective control is a moral imperative for humanity.”
The document demands not just transition to low-carbon and renewable energy, but making “urgent investments” in sustainable development, rich countries footing the investment bill for the poor countries and divesting away from the military. Who needs an army, a navy, or an air force when the world is so peaceful and non-threatening?
As my good friend Chriss R. pointed out, this was an extraordinary event for Marxist politicians from around the globe to meet at the Vatican with the pope to discuss something that has nothing to do with religion or the salvation of souls. Furthermore, who paid for the very expensive trip of each mayor who flew to Rome on 60 different jets spewing carbon into the atmosphere?
If it was the taxpayers, how does that sit with atheists and spiritualists for their politicians to chat up a religious leader? Don’t they usually reject the church and vociferously demand separation of church and state? If it was the Catholic Church that paid for the trip of all these socialists, why did the church not use the money to help the starving poor instead?
Pope Francis is quoted by National Geographic as having said, “It’s very entertaining to be Pope.” Is it helpful to use a powerful moral authority to influence something that is not real, has no basis in real science or fact, and it will definitely cause more poverty around the globe?
The deep de-carbonization meeting in Paris, The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (
COP21) is likely to draw at least 10,000 government and UN representatives, all arriving on carbon-spewing jets. But the rules of the new climatism science are just for ordinary people, not for those who control the world.
Deep decarbonizing is a must for the masses. As
Dr. Klaus Kaiser stated, “How else can you reduce the world population from 7 to 8 billion to fewer than one billion which Professor HJ Schellnhuber opines as necessary? He is the director of the Potsdam Institut fuer Klimafolgenforschung,” a German government-sponsored entity for “climate impact research.” The Pontiff named “Schellnhuber to the 400-year old institution of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS).” Schellnhuber is the co-author of the encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si.
National Geographic published a fascinating article on his Holiness, Pope Francis. Robert Draper and Dave Yoder, who gained unprecedented access to the pope, wrote about and photographed the pope extensively.
The Conclave chose the former Argentinian, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and “vaulted him from relative obscurity into the papacy. To many observers – some delighted, other discomfited – the new pope already had changed seemingly everything, seemingly overnight.” 
