In FrontPage today I discuss the ill winds blowing as Pope Francis prepares to visit “the state of Palestine”:
“The Che Guevara of the Palestinians” is set to visit Palestinian Authority-controlled Judea and Samaria next week, beginning in Bethlehem, and the city of Jesus’s birth is already in high excitement. The bearer of that illustrious title is none other than Pope Francis. According to Israel National News, “Rabbi Sergio Bergman, a member of the Argentinian parliament and close friend of Pope Francis…said that the pope intends to define himself as the ‘Che Guevera of the Palestinians’ and support their ‘struggle and rights’ during his visit.”
If the Pope or anyone around him has expressed a similar intention to speak out about the Muslim persecution of Palestinian Christians, it has not been recorded – in sharp contrast to the abundance of signals that the Pope has sent to Palestinian Authority officials. Fr. Jamal Khader of the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem explained: “He is taking a helicopter directly from Jordan to Palestine — to Bethlehem. It’s a kind of sign of recognizing Palestine.” In anticipation of his doing just that officially, Palestinian officials have put up posters proclaiming “State of Palestine” and depicting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Pope Francis, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.
Not only that, but while in Bethlehem, Pope Francis will meet with Abbas; he also plans to celebrate Mass there rather than in Jerusalem, a move that Israel National News says “has been called a show of support for the PA.” He then plans to visit a Palestinian “refugee camp.”
Khader predicted: “Knowing who he is, and his sensitivity for all those who suffer, I am sure that he will say something defending all those who are suffering, including the Palestinians who live under occupation.” Ziyyad Bandak, Abbas’s adviser for Christian affairs, was enthusiastic: “This visit will help us in supporting our struggle to end the longest occupation in history….We welcome this visit and consider it as support for the Palestinian people, and confirmation from the Vatican of the need to end the occupation.”
All this comes after a Church official in Jerusalem criticized Israeli authorities for asking that a sign announcing the Pope’s visit be taken down from a historic site on which such signs are prohibited for preservation reasons. The unnamed official referenced recent Hebrew-language hate graffiti spray-painted on mosques and churches, saying that he and other Church officials “question the fact that the police, instead of taking action against the extremists who paint hate slogans on mosques and churches, choose to remove a sign with a positive message that welcomes the pope in three languages. We hope the police will act with the same determination to prevent the growing incitement and violence against Christians.”
While referring to the graffiti as “incitement and violence against Christians,” however, Church officials have been much more reticent regarding Muslim persecution of Palestinian Christians, even when it has included actual violence. According to Israel National News, “Christian Arab residents of the village of El-Khader in the Bethlehem area were savagely attacked by local Muslims as they celebrated a Christian holiday two weeks ago. A report by CAMERA, an organization which monitors anti-Israel bias in the media, reported that Christians attempting to enter Saint George’s Monastery in the village were intimidated and attacked with rocks and stones.”
Yet about this and other incidents of Muslim persecution of Christians, Pope Francis, as well as Vatican and Church officials, have said little. Last November, Pope Francis decried the plight of “Christians who suffer in a particularly severe way the consequences of tensions and conflicts in many parts of the Middle East.” He added that “Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other areas of the Holy Land sometimes overflow with tears” and declared: “We won’t resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who for two thousand years confess the name of Jesus, as full citizens in social, cultural and religious life of the nations to which they belong.”
Neither on that occasion or any other, however, has Pope Francis ever ascribed the suffering of Middle Eastern Christians to anything beyond “the consequences of tensions and conflicts in many parts of the Middle East.” Apparently he believes that if those tensions and conflicts could somehow be resolved, Christians would be able to live freely in the Middle East. After all, he has famously asserted that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence,” thereby dismissing the possibility that Christians may be facing persecution from Muslims who are obeying the Qur’anic imperative to fight them “until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).
What’s more, when Pope Benedict XVI spoke out in January 2011 against the jihad bombing of the Coptic cathedral in Alexandria, Egypt, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the world’s most prestigious Sunni Muslim institution, reacted angrily, breaking off dialogue with the Vatican and accusing the Pope of interference in internal Egyptian affairs. In a statement, Al-Azhar denounced the pontiff’s “repeated negative references to Islam and his claims that Muslims persecute those living among them in the Middle East.” When Pope Francis succeeded Benedict, Al-Azhar and other Muslim authorities expressed hopes that he would repair relations between Muslims and Christians by not repeating the mistakes of his predecessor — including speaking out about the Muslim persecution of Christians.
Francis complied, affirming his “respect” for Islam and apparently accepting al-Azhar’s stipulation that “casting Islam in a negative light is ‘a red line’ that must not be crossed.” He has not, in any case, crossed it, even to decry the actions of Muslims to harass, victimize and persecute Christians because of Qur’anic declarations that they are accursed of Allah for saying Jesus is the Son of God (9:30); are unbelievers for affirming the divinity of Christ (5:17; 5:72); and must be warred against and subjugated (9:29).
And so during his trip that the Palestinians are awaiting with such excitement, it is likely that he will have little, if anything, to say about how core beliefs held by the Palestinians he is celebrating are used to justify the oppression of their Christian brethren. It is even less likely that he will note that Christians in Israel enjoy greater rights and freedoms than their brethren in any Muslim country. We may only hope that whatever the “Che Guevara of the Palestinians” says in Bethlehem or elsewhere in the Palestinian Authority, that it will not be capable of being exploited, by those persecutors of Christians he seems determined to ignore, to justify their actions and perpetuate that persecution.
John C. Barile says
You know, my understanding of papal infallibility is this: the Pope is as culpable and sinful as we, but in matters of faith and morals the Holy Spirit would not allow Christ’s Church to fall into doctrinal error–and, given this Pope’s tenuous health, the Holy Spirit may just have other plans than Francis does.
John C. Barile says
Scandal shall come; but woe to him by whom scandal comes–better for him to have a millstone hung upon him and be cast into the deepest part of the sea, that to give scandal to any of these, my little ones.
Thomas J. Hennigan says
Che Guevara was a mass murderer and what Jesus says in the Gospel about he whol lives by the sword dies by the sword holds throught for him. His vicitms were not killed on any battlefield.
Wellington says
Agreed. Che Guevara was a psychopath and enthralled with visiting death upon his enemies, very much like Mohammed. If this Pope has any regard for Che Guevara he is a complete fool and arguably a malevolent one at that.
Very PeterBd says
The biggest problem I see is WWJD? I think Jesus would love people but he could hate certain actions. When people define hate as universally inhuman, we can see that it is PC to not hate murder, rape, pedophilia, slavery and even suicidal/mutual genocide.
If the Pope truly was Christian, he would know that the Religion of Islam is incompatible with Christianity, incompatible with Catholicism, and 100% incompatible with democracy, freedom, justice and liberty. I understand not voicing that right now, but he can’t be negotiating and rubbing elbows with Islamic leaders who are smiling at him as if they are equals when inside their head, they are thinking they will enslave the Vatican someday. Islam is not just incompatible, “incompatible” is to narrow a word. Islam is diametrically and violently opposed towards all religions, sciences, philosophies and ESPECIALLY, Liberty and Justice For ALL! Not all Muslims are active Islamic soldiers, but the ideology, the infrastructure and especially the dogma and children’s education system teaches and brainwashes supremacy of Muslims and inferiority of all others. Any religious clergy would build an infrastructure of violent hate if it was allowed to kill all dissent, questions, competition and able to silence all free speech, press and religion.
There is no separation of Church and state in Islam and that fact alone should rally every politician and religious world leader to demand Islamic clergy join the interfaith commitment to secular government to protect the rights of all. Islam will NEVER allow it to be separate from the state. The clergy want the Zakat and they want child brides every 5 years, and they want to kill as often as they want. It is a truly secretive and barbaric lifestyle within the Islamic clergy and they will kill the world to maintain it.
Wellington says
I see where Francis is going to visit the tomb of Theordor Herzl which, of course, has the so-called Palestinians engaging in hissy-fits aplenty. And yet Francis has acceded to Arab Muslim priorities too by, among other things, scheduling a visit to a so-called Palestinian refugee camp. Well, the tomb of Herzl and a Palestinian refugee camp are hardly equivalents, now are they? At least, in any case, for those who knowledgeably embrace moral absolutes. Ah, see the irony?
I mention all this because Francis increasingly strikes me as a straddler——and straddlers tend to be among those people who call themselves “moderates,” and there is no such thing as a great moment in moderate history. Quite the contrary, moderates tend to coddle evil until the price paid for liquadating evil proves to be far higher because it is dealt with farther down the road than sooner. I fear very much Francis is in this mold. He makes me long for Benedict.
Gba says
Wellington! Many thanks for your words of WISDOM! I know I can always count on your intelligent approach.
CogitoErgoSum says
I’m not all that familiar with Che Guevara so I looked him up on Wikipedia. He was from Argentina, like Pope Francis, and there are even some high schools there named in honor of Guevara. Some Bolivian campesino’s call him “Saint Ernesto” and school children in Cuba begin the day by pledging, “We will be like Che.” However, many Cuban exiles in the U.S. think of him as the “Butcher of La Cabana” (La Cabana is an old fort overlooking Havana Harbor which was used as a military prison by Castro in 1959 and where Guevara oversaw military tribunals and executions.) So I’m not sure comparing Pope Francis to Che Guevara is very accurate….but, as a close friend of the Pope, maybe this Rabbi Bergman knows something the rest of the world does not. Anyway, I’d prefer that Pope Francis act more like his namesake and be the “Saint Francis of the Palestinians” instead.
Semeru says
Of course, given the history of the Catholic Church, I don’t know why going as himself wouldn’t have been sufficient.
CogitoErgoSum says
By the way, if anyone cares to see an old movie about the life of St. Francis there is one on YouTube called “Francis of Assisi” that was made in 1961 and directed by Michael Curtiz. It stars Bradford Dillman, Dolores Hart and Stuart Whitman. There’s a segment in it about the meeting between Francis and Malik-al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt, which I found quite interesting (it sets up at around the 1:10:05 mark). The movie has more talk than action and gets a little over-dramatic at the end but I thought that overall it was pretty good. You can see for yourself at the link below:
Kepha says
Apologies to any Argentines here, but that country strikes me as retarded. A few years after both Mussolini and Hitler are dead in the rubble of WWII, they decide that Fascism is the wave of the future and bring Juan Peron into power. Now, after it is clear that Communist Cuba is a failure (at least outside of the hospital wards where tourists pay with convertable currency), and their “world class medical establishment” has to bring in a Spaniard to treat El Maximon Lider’s diverticulitis, this Argentine Pope wants to emulate Ernesto Guevara Serna y Lynch–Castro’s patsy who was sent to a place in Bolivia where Communist sentiment was all but nil and the certain death which overcame him. I also understand that at the first news of the Bay of Pigs invasion, “Che” pissed his pants and shot himself in the foot. He also surrendered to the Bolivian army with a full clip in his pistol, after ordering his followers to fight to the death (which they did). Were I an Argentine, I would blush purple in embarrassment at every icon of Guevara.
So, why did Pope Francis raise the urinals in the Vatican six inches? He wanted to keep the Cardinals on their toes.
shrugger says
Has the Pope murdered anyone? If the answer is no, then he probably shouldn’t call himself Che
Joseph says
I’m sorry, but I think it is an absolute disgrace and embarrassment that Pope Francis is behaving in this way.
The truth is quite clear and easily verified. There absolutely is not any “occupation” of “Palestine” and the Jews are clearly and demonstrably in the right in this struggle. Don’t believe this? Go to StandWithUs dot org and inform yourself.
But the fact that the Pope himself could be So ignorant of both Islam and Hamas/Fatah is an abomination. Francis is a disgrace. Just another soft-headed liberal light on the facts but heavy on trendy “causes”. What an embarrassment for us Catholics.
To my Jewish brethren: not all Catholics feel as this ignorant fool does. Many of us know the truth about YOUR oppression at the hands of the so-called “Palestinians”. In 70 AD, when the Romans first referred to Israel as “Palestine” (to mock the Jews by renaming their country after their worst enemy, the Philistines) the only people in “Palestine” were in fact…the Jews. So in fact the Jews are the true Palestinians, not the post 1967 Jordanians whom Arafat and the Arabs fabricated as a people.
Anyway, Pope Francis has officially declared: “Authentic Islam and the proper interpretation of the Koran show that Islam is opposed to every form of violence” (Evangelii Gaudium #253).
This clearly shows that he is deeply ignorant of the true nature of Islam and cannot be trusted in his judgments or in his alliances.
Disgraceful. And I applaud Robert for calling him out on this point.
Charli Main says
Joseph
Palestine is in fact an occupied land—-occupied by Muslim invaders from Mecca, as is the whole of North Africa, the Near and Middle East.
WVinMN says
“Rabbi Sergio Bergman, a member of the Argentinian parliament and close friend of Pope Francis…said that the pope intends to define himself as the ‘Che Guevera of the Palestinians’
A sitting pope compares himself to a mass murderer? If this is accurate, Francis is either stupid, a psychopath or some combination of the two. Every time this dip-shit opens his mouth he confirms the worst fears I’ve held about him since he first became pope.
Champ says
A sitting pope compares himself to a mass murderer? If this is accurate, Francis is either stupid, a psychopath or some combination of the two. Every time this dip-shit opens his mouth he confirms the worst fears I’ve held about him since he first became pope.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree!
Roelf-Jan Wentholt says
“If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” (Che Guevara, November 1962.)
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/humberto-fontova/fantasies-of-nuclear-war/)
“On Nov. 17 1962, J Edgar Hoovers’ FBI cracked a terrorist plot by Cuban agents that targeted Macy’s Gimbel’s, Bloomindales and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set to go off the following week, the day after Thanksgiving. Che Guevara was the head of Cuba’s “Foreign Liberation Department” at the time.
A little perspective: for their March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of them, that killed and maimed almost 2000 people, al-Qaida used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro and Che’s agents planned to set off five times that explosive power in the three biggest department stores on earth, all packed to suffocation and pulsing with holiday cheer on the year’s biggest shopping day.”
(http://www.autentico.org/oa09924.php)
A true role model for a pope to follow.
Mirren10 says
Is this disgusting tool going to visit the hotels, shopping malls, and restaurants et al in Gaza, as well ?
No, probably not.
Anyone who thinks the evil and **cowardly** Che Guevera was some kind of ‘freedom fighter’ is a wicked fool.
http://www.idfblog.com/2013/08/12/what-happened-to-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza/
bicky says
The next thing on the holy popes agenda would be a trip to Boko Haram , Hizbollah and ” commend ” them on their” interfaith ” outreaches.
……..Things are getting loonier day by day, when you cant beat them, then join them seems to be this ” holy” man s motto
Rita says
Brought up catholic, I despise this “mainstream-media-darling” Pope. His first official – media-pleasing act – was to kiss the feet of a young muslim woman. GAK.
http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/pope-snogs-young-muslimas-feet.html
And now this born-again Che Guevara is schussing some more Christian-and Jew-killing Muslims?
Oy, Francis: CHE IS DEAD – GET OVER IT !
http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/che-guevara.html
dumbledoresarmy says
One should not forget that poor Mr Spencer is a faithful, practising Greek Melkite *Catholic*.
He is in exactly the same unenviable position as, for example, Anglicans like myself were during the years when we were led by the deeply-embarrassing and dangerously-dhimmified Archbishop Robin Williams.
It’s a terrible state of affairs when us poor sheep have to leap up and down and try to tell our pastors – “Mate, turn around! You’re trying to lead us all over a cliff!! Stop! Turn around!”
dumbledoresarmy says
OOOPs.
Senior moment (50th birthday was last year).
It was *Rowan* Williams, of course, not Robin Williams.
John C. Barile says
A Freudian slip–Good one! I turned 58 not too long ago.
Kepha says
@DDA: Well, Robin Williams is sometimes funny, even if Rowan Williams always struck me as a nonentity. Take that from a Calvinist who freely admits a big spiritual debt to a bunch of Anglicans.
Larry S says
We won’t resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who for two thousand years confess the name of Jesus, as full citizens in social, cultural and religious life of the nations to which they belong
This statement is a little difficult to parse, so perhaps I am mis-understanding the pontiff. But as I read it, there’s just one thing wrong with the statement: it’s not true. At various times and places in the Middle East, Christians have been able to practice their faith openly without punitive measures. But that felicitous state hardly encompasses the entire history, which is filled with things like dhimmitude and the impressment of young Christian boys as soldiers in the Ottoman army.
It would be astonishing if the reigning pope were ignorant of that history- and if he is not ignorant of it, then why the dishonesty, which is surely unbecoming to a pope? If he truly is ignorant, then perhaps he could ask retired Pope Benedict for instruction on matter.
I consider his statement to be a slap in the face at the Christians over the centuries who perservered in their faith in the face of crushing discrimination and oppression. Utterly disgraceful coming from the Bishop of Rome.
Islamisdeath says
My family have been Protestants since before the Reformation. We have our dhimmi denominations too. Example: Presbyterians, Episcopalians and sadly Methodists. But that said at least as a Protestant, none of the afore mentioned, I am not led by a man who claims to be infallible yet in the end is just a fallible man. This guy is very scarey. I wonder if he is doing whatever he thinks he has to do to preserve the Vatican, or does he actually believe these thugs can be swayed, or is he a truly a communist like his idol Che?
I think he is truly a communist influenced by the grinding poverty of South America. Additionally the Catholic church has always been a foe of the Jews. Lot to think about here.
AnneM says
If one wants to know more about the NT Book of Revelation, there is now a graphic novel version of that book that has come out almost 2 years ago. Makes it easier to read and understand:
http://www.zondervan.com/the-book-of-revelation.html
Ian Marshall says
Oops, dumbledorsarmy – sure it wasn`t Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr Bean)?
The Pope is actually useless. He just talks and says he`ll pray for things, and they never happen. What`s the use of a magic man who can pull any tricks?
Kepha says
Snicker, snicker.
Ian Marshall says
Krikes! `Can`t pull any tricks`, I meant.
Prinz Eugen says
This new pope needs some aids who carry a duct tape dispenser — he needs to have his trap sealed shut. For the elected leader of the Catholic Church, he
sounds much more like Mao or Che — if he does not believe the Church doctrine, no one in Rome will kill him if he decides to become a moslem and
has ooodles of wives and concubines, even young-uns’ !!!
Cardinals: next time, please check the man thoroughly before giving him this worldwide soapbox for his personal toy!
Just meeting with moslem terrorists gives them a veneer of respectability which they have not earned. Hamas and the hoods should be blessed with “daisy cutters” until they decide to leave the 7th century!