Will Pope Francis Help Stop the Growth of European Fascism?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/295-164/22228-focus-will-pope-francis-help-stop-the-growth-of-european-fascism

Pope Francis is the only man of the left still in Italian political life,” laughs Stephen Sartarelli, the English-language translator of the Inspector Montalbano mysteries and a leading authority on the filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini. Sartarelli kept hearing this view of the pope while on a recent trip to visit family in Rome, where the weakness of the left is a running joke. Who but the pontiff is speaking out against the ravages of capitalism in Italy and the neo-liberal economics of enforced austerity?

Sartarelli lives just down the road here in the French Dordogne, and we share a growing concern with the resurgence of the ultra-right, not only in France, but throughout much of the continent. He and I tend to differ on Pope Francis, whom I see as I believe he sees himself – not “a man of the left,” but a modern-day follower of the Catholic social thinking in the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum with a touch of Argentinian Peronism.

Either way, the big question will not go away. Will Pope Francis stand up against the growing threat of a new European fascism? Or will the Catholic Church under his leadership aid and abet the “fachos” as the controversial Pope Pius XII and so much of his Church has been accused – rightly or wrongly – of doing in the 1930s?

Most people writing about Pope Francis never discuss this, but how he answers the Fascist question could become historically more important than what he does about the Curia, Vatican Bank, child-abusing priests, or the dozen or so other issues now on the papal plate.

A possible tell may be his decision to slow down any canonization of Pius until scholars can fully study the Vatican’s secret wartime archives. The Sunday Times of London reported this in January, citing Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a friend of the pope from Buenos Aires who visited him in Rome in September and will accompany him on his visit to Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank in May.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. "francis" did nothing to stop the military dictators in argentina.

Pope pious the whatever collaborated with the fascists during WWII.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

4. Exactly how was Father Bergoglio supposed to stop the military regime in Argentina?

Be specific.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Sure thing.

There have been past accusations, including testimony from a handful of priests and bishops, that the man who is now Pope Francis was complicit, too, if in a more subtle way. He was, in the early years of the Dirty War, the provincial, or superior, of the Society of Jesus in Argentina, at a time when the Jesuits produced some of the more freethinking and socially liberal clerics in Latin America—a number of whom were targeted by military leaders during the era’s repression—and later led a seminary. The key allegation against him is that he pointed out left-leaning priests to the military as dissidents, leaving them exposed, and that he did not defend two kidnapped clerics or ask for their release. He has denied this, and says instead that he protected priests and others—just quietly, in secret.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/03/pope-francis-jorge-bergoglio-argentina-dirty-war.html

At a minimum, as the head of the Jesuits in Argentina, he kept silent about the atrocities.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

6. I notice words such as "accusations" and "allegation". The article has more innuendo than facts

Anyway you said he did nothing to STOP the generals. I asked you how he was supposed to stop them. You did not answer my question.

[trotsky]

2. Liberals laugh off and ignore him on abortion, the role of women, gay marriage, etc...

I'm sure it will work about the same for conservatives about his economic statements.

[rug]

3. Whether he does or not, he's making it much harder for them.

That must explain the churlish reactions.