Pope Francis

Pope Francis of Argentina is the current pope, elected by the cardinals on March 13, 2013. He inherited a Catholic church that is out of control in many ways, and to solve those problems, he'll have to work miracles. Only time will tell if this one is a miracle worker. It's unclear how far there has been real change and how far the Francis effect is skillful manipulation of the public. Expectations have been raised that could be disappointed later.



Good and bad
Francis rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church to become Cardinal and later Pope. He's certainly a social conservative, but he's not completely crazy as he is a liberal on economic issues, like poverty. Did you expect anything better from any new Pope?

As of late 2013 we don't know how much real change there is or will be, how much apparent change is Propaganda or media hype. Certainly there will be less change than Liberals within and outside the Roman Catholic Church who so fervently praise Francis hope for. This article tries to sort out how what's really happening but as of late 2013 we don't know many answers yet.

Francis is a Jesuit which may be good or bad.

Poverty
Francis spoke many times exhorting sympathy for the poor and those who are suffering.

Capitalism
Pope Francis criticised unbridled capitalism and claimed excessive respect for money has become Idolatry. "Attacking unchecked capitalism, the pope said the growing inequality in society was caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good"." Lizzy Davies writing in The Guardian Francis claims the economic crisis happened because we accept that money rules us, ethics are too frequently treated as inconvenient and disregarded.

Selfish capitalists will most likely respond to pious condemnation from the pope with 'Business as usual'.

Liberation theology
Liberation theology is movement within the Roman Catholic Church encouraging poor People to take action against Rich oppressors. Supporters of Liberation theology will find the new pope's attitude encouraging and opponents of Liberation theology will probably lose influence. We must not forget though that for over a millennium the Roman Catholic Church has been very much on the side of Rich people. Roman Catholic clerics and others who support the Church and wealth are undoubtedly doing what they can behind the scenes to undermine any radical change should Francis try to start anything. If there is a chance of too radical change pressure on Francis to tone down his anti capitalist speeches will undoubtedly increase.

American Republicans
The pope's support for poor people and criticism of capitalism has some positive impact even outside the Roman Catholic Church. The largely Protestant Religious Right in the USA is working as hard as ever to undermine poor people. Remember how hard they fought against Obamacare which will help poor and middle income people. Still speaking out to condemn poor people is becoming more difficult, Protestants in the Religious Right don't like being seen as less compassionate than a Pope.

Poverty and contraception
Francis opposes contraception, his opposition and Roman Catholic opposition generally to Contraception reduces the value of any help RC's give the poor. Among practising Catholic there are poor people with large families who can't easily afford to give all their children a good standard of living or educate all their children properly. Fortunately in Developed countries most Roman Catholics disregard Church teaching on contraception but in the Third World where poverty is most extreme opposition to contraception from Roman Catholics and others does a great deal of harm.

Those who knew Francis in Argentina insist his concern for poor people is sincere but it's unclear if he actually will help poor people. The risk is that in the Third World large numbers of uneducated and partially educated poor people will support Francis and the Roman Catholic Church because they appear to be on the side of the poor.
 * 1) At first some poor people will do better with Roman Catholic help and the Church will look for good publicity over this.
 * 2) Later when the effect of Roman Catholic teaching on contraception works through the system there will be very many large Roman Catholic families in the Third World. Many of these families will be desperately poor and desperately miserable.

In Argentina the present government officially provides free contraception for all citizens and this benefits primarily poor people since better off people can afford contraception. Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis opposed this free contraception, the law is regularly disregarded and broken at least partly due to Roman Catholic opposition.
 * 1) What did Francis offer poor Argentinians where yet more children will plunge them even deeper into poverty?
 * 2) The best he and fellow Roman Catholics offered was exhortations to abstinence. Really? If exhortations to abstinence worked we wouldn't see One sex scandal After another involving supposedly celibate Roman Catholic priests.

Present and future
 * 1) Discouraging contraception adds to Overpopulation and poverty. If Francis really cares about poor people his opposition to contraception is seriously misguided. See also Francis and poverty.
 * 2) In autumn 2013 Francis had been telling others in the Roman Catholic Church to stop obsessing over a few sins (including contraception) and to attend to a greater range of sins. Where this will lead is currently unclear but there could be less pressure on poor people in the Third World and in developed countries to have so many children they remain trapped in poverty. Let's hope things improve for poor people.

Women
Francis may give women a more influential role within the church though all that may turn out to be just public relation, we don't know yet.

Women are valued but subordinate to men
At the end of 2013 we're still waiting for any concrete improvement in the position of Roman Catholic women. Women cardinals have been ruled out leaving us less optimistic over women getting any major leadership opportunities. Francis said, "Women in the Church must be valued not ‘clericalised’. Whoever thinks of women as cardinals suffers a bit from clericalism." That's completely untrue, those who would like to see women cardinals want more equality between the sexes they may or may not also want clericalism. It looks like women should value their subordinate role while only men are in dominant clerical positions. Is it also clericalism to prevent non-ordained people becoming cardinals? "Or is the act of clericalism assuming that top Vatican posts must be held by cardinals, or at least by priests and bishops? Is it clericalism to only allow cardinals a vote in choosing the pope? Is Francis only furthering the notion of clericalism by even naming cardinals in the first place?" Unless Francis works to reduce the influence of clerics drastically in the Roman Catholic Church it will look like stuff about suffering from clericalism is really just an excuse to keep male clerics dominant. We'll have to see what happens in 2014 and following years, the signs aren't very good.

Francis cracked down on the LCWR who represent over 80% of Nuns in the USA. The LCWR are more liberal than the Vatican about issues like, Abortion, Birth control, homosexuality, women's ordination, so what should we expect? Well under Benedict XVI male supervisors were appointed but the women would not let the men pressure them to change their position. Pope Francis has also turned against the Liberal women and some Americans Feminists are turning against Pope Francis.

Women's choice
Francis is Pro-life and believes women should be forced to carry babies they don't want. Since Francis opposes Contraception many Roman Catholic women risk finding themselves pregnant when they don't want this. Francis has toned down opposition to contraception but there still is a problem. Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi both are Pro-choice and have problems with the new pope over his pro-life position.

Sexual sin
Francis believes Homosexuality is a sin, he accepts Civil unions but not Gay marriage or gay adoption. Francis sees gay marriage as the work of the devil. Many Christians prefer civil unions to full marriage. Francis accepts gays as priests because he says being tempted isn't sinful. Francis wants gays to be welcomed in Roman Catholic churches because he sees sinners as lost sheep to be saved, similarly Francis wants to encourage many who disagree with Roman Catholic doctrines accepted in the Church because he believes in hating the sin and loving the sinner. Basically Francis encourages many to rejoin the Church who were pressured to leave the Church under Benedict XVI. Still he sees them as sinful but believes other sins (especially financial sins) matter at least as much.

Under Francis gays, remarried Divorcees, people who plan their families can stay in the Church more easily. "It's worth noting that these are mostly changes of emphasis, not doctrine. Pope Francis won't devote his reign to attacking gays, women, condoms and abortion, but nor does he seem prepared to change church policy towards them." Not everyone is convinced improvements are real or sufficient. "Vaguely pro-LGBT statements don’t protect gay Catholic youth who have been kicked out of their homes and are living on the streets, or ensure that same-sex spouses will be allowed to visit one another in Christian hospitals. They don’t protect LGBT kids who are tormented in religious schools while teachers preach against “alternative lifestyles” or help LGBT employees who are fired from their jobs in states where their rights aren’t protected." Brian Cahill is also concerned, he points out that Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and others crusade against gays as vigorously they did as under Benedict. "I [Brian Cahill] am a 73-year-old, white, heterosexual male and have not been on the receiving end of the ignorance, hate and narrow orthodoxy that religious belief can still stir up. (...) My son and his partner have been. And thousands like them, all made in the image and likeness of God, have been on the receiving end of hate and ignorance, and in the context of our church, the maddening, wounding, mixed message of love and condemnation."

Financial sin
By contrast financial sinner, German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, Lied under oath pretending he didn't fly first class and had to pay a fine over this. Tebartz-van Elst did worse than that, he wasted Church funds over copious, unnecessary renovations to his residence at a time when his diocese was short of cash and underpaying staff. Among many other extravagances was a $20,000 personal bathtub in his living room of all places, where he hoped to immerse his austere Celibate body luxuriously. The bishop nicknamed, "Bishop of Bling" found himself in hot water and was suspended from his position.

Sins of the Church
Francis consistently refuses to acknowledge large-scale Human rights abuses, even Genocide involving the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries. "There is a strange omission that puts the pope on the wrong side even of John Paul II. It's his failure so far to engage with or even acknowledge the past horrors over which the church has presided. From the destruction of the Cathars to the Magdalene laundries, the Catholic church has experimented with almost every kind of extermination, genocide, torture, mutilation, execution, enslavement, cruelty and abuse known to humankind. (...) How can the pope get a grip on the future if he won't acknowledge the past?" Clearly persuading people to see the Roman Catholic Church in a good light is more important for Francis than getting to the truth.

Media
Francis "urged the media to get to know the Church with its 'virtues and sins'" Does Francis really want people to know about how Pope Pius XII failed to take a stand against mass murder in Croatia during World War II although he knew many Roman Catholic clergy and laity were involved in those murders. This was one of many failures to act or take a stand against Genocide. That's just one very big example of wrong doing by the Roman Catholic Church that isn't widely known, the Magdalene laundry scandal in Ireland is another.

What Francis seems to mean is, 'get to know the Church with its virtues and those sins that we can't prevent you knowing, overlook the ugliness and share what we claim is the Church's "focus on 'truth, goodness and beauty'."

Friends with dictators
There are accusations that Bergoglio was involved in the kidnapping and torture of two priests during the Dictatorship by the Argentinian Junta in the 1980's. There are further accusations that he was aware of the kidnapping of pregnant women whose children were later separated from their birth families and adopted by supporters of the Junta. These rumours have never been proved but don't go away. As of April 2013 the Roman Catholic church hasn't published Church archives that could show what really happened. Church archives could reveal more than the kidnappings described above. The grandmothers of missing children want to know what happened and one grandmother says the pope told her: "You can count on me. You can count on us." Well can the grandmothers count on the pope to open Vatican archives and help them find their grandchildren? Now that depends on what's in those archives and how embarrassing that could be for the Roman Catholic Church. Only Vatican insiders know the answer.

Child sex abuse
The Washington Post suggests Francis is tainted by the Priest Child Molestation Scandal but claims he mended his ways at least partly.

But during most of the 14 years that Bergoglio served as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rights advocates say, he did not take decisive action to protect children or act swiftly when molestation charges surfaced; nor did he extend apologies to the victims of abusive priests after their misconduct came to light.

Another source says something similar.

"It does not appear, however, that Pope Francis had earlier distinguished himself either as a senior Latin American bishop by condemning Fr. Maciel’s blatant abuses over many years, nor as a Jesuit has he seemingly to date clearly spoken out on the well reported extensive abuse of Native American children by some Jesuits."

Most/all clergy high up in the Roman Catholic hierarchy have done stuff they shouldn't in a big way so they couldn't easily find anyone better than Francis to become pope.

The Church tries to paint its popes whiter than white, we need to check carefully and research what they're really like.

Francis promised to see that perpetrators of child sex abuse are punished but at least one abuse survivors' group is unconvinced much will be done. Liberapedia advises readers to check how far words lead to action. A year from now we will know a great deal more. Will the pope punish himself for failing to take decisive action over child abuse during the early time that he was a senior Latin American bishop? If he doesn't that will be Hypocrisy and hypocrisy undermines the church.

There are allegations that the Latin American Roman Catholic Church is still covering up child abuse cases, there were several cases where the Church hierarchy were less than fully cooperative about uncovering paedophilia. "For critics, the cases show the church under Francis — who was archbishop of Buenos Aires before becoming Latin America's first pope — still has a long way to go in how it handles pedophile priests." Covering up the bad stuff is a Roman Catholic tradition, will Francis improve things? "The church establishment’s response, including since Francis became pontiff, has largely been one of silence." As of Autumn 2013 Pope Francis hasn't improved this scandal. "And so, as we are regaled with tales of Francis's marvellous humanity, his love of the poor and suffering, the tens of thousands – maybe even millions - of [child sex abuse] victims around the globe wait and hope that something will change. Francis seems too busy being adored at present to be bothered with them."

Speculation
''As of 2013 we speculate and later we'll know how far speculation was accurate. ''

Just before the papal election at least one Roman Catholic source feared Cardinal Bergoglio as he then was might be too old to sort out Corruption in the Vatican, at 77 Francis is past the typical retiring age. Is that what corrupt cardinals want who elected him pope? About a month after the start of the papacy Francis formed and advisory panel to help sort out problems with the Vatican bureaucracy. The first formal meeting was in October 2013. We can assume the resolve of Francis was still firm when he founded the panel. Financial wrongdoing is something Francis specially hates and during summer 2013 Francis showed quite some resolve in trying to sort out the Vatican Bank where there is one scandal after another. He continued to give sorting out corruption high priority in the autumn of 2013, there have been several well publicised changes removing corrupt Vatican officials. Since the Vatican is a highly secretive organisation we can no more than guess how many corrupt officials are still in place. We wait to see how far Francis will succeed and what will happen over other problems with the Vatican bureaucracy.

Will the resolve of Francis remain firm over the months and years that Vatican bureaucrats can get to the elderly gentleman? Since Francis is living outside the traditional papal apartments his minders can't control who gets an audience with the pope and who gets to influence him the way they usually do with popes. In the guest rooms where Francis lives and eats many people can get to him and tell him what they feel he should know. Notably in the guest house where Francis lives prelates from outside who are visiting the Vatican can tell him what's happening at grass roots level. The result is a pope who looks less confident, he's hearing a range of views not restricted to what he personally wants to hear and what his minders want him to hear but a pope who's closer to reality. Time will tell how far Vatican bureaucrats can still get to him.


 * 1) His purported links to a supposed anti-Marxist group may make him unpopular with the radical left.
 * 2) They say he criticises capitalism and the free market too which could make him unpopular with the Right as well.

Liberapedia doesn't know how far Roman Catholic concern over poverty is sincere or how far that is a cynical plan to get converts from the Third World and from poorer sections of the Developed world. After all more educated people in industrialised nations are turning against religion and Roman Catholicism. Most likely some in the Roman Catholic hierarchy are sincere but others are cynical. The pope himself almost certainly is sincerely concerned about poverty but his advisers may not be.