Good morning kids. Of course the big story this morning is the election of a successor to Pope [Fiction] Francis, and the first American to be elected pontiff. While I was hoping for one of the cardinals from Africa or perhaps the Philippines to have been elected, considering those nations and their Christian citizenry have been enduring horrendous Islamic persecution and butchery for years. That the papacy has at best been silent and/or indifferent to Islamic genocide against it and at worst appeasers of and apologists for Islam especially during the tenure of the last Pope, was a travesty.
Christians in Nigeria are murdered almost daily through indiscriminate attacks led by Muslims. Nigerian Christian women are abducted, raped, gang-raped and sexually abused on a widespread scale. Violence is only one of the many forms of persecution that Christians in Nigeria face. They are also subjected to systematic, Sharia-based discrimination, a situation which is particularly routine in the majority-Muslim northern states.
One of the methods used to silence Christian voices utilizes the deadly blasphemy laws. In many cases, Muslim mobs take the law into their own hands and execute Christians who they accuse of blasphemy.
In 2022, for instance, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a second-year Christian college student, was stoned and burnt to death by a mob of Muslim students in Sokoto, Nigeria, after being accused of blasphemy against Islam. . .
. . . Nigerian social media has been awash with many hate speech posts against the Church, and many Muslim clerics have made it a point of duty to constantly preach hate against Christians. The immediate past governor of Kaduna was seen on video preaching hate against Christians. Almost all the time the perpetrators of these kinds of smear campaigns are not brought to justice. Smear campaigns are a very common thing against Christians… Also, Christians in the North experience daily abuse and are called all kinds of derogatory names such as “infidels.”
Christian families and children appear to be a specific target of Muslims in Nigeria:
Christian spouses and/or children of Christians have been subject to separation for prolonged periods of time by circumstances relating to persecution. Children of Christians have been harassed or discriminated against because of their parents’ faith. Most of this happens in the North, although increasingly also in the South.
Babies and children of Christians have automatically been registered under the state or majority religion.
As an aside and thought experiment. Replace the word Islam/Muslim with Democrat/Leftist and Christians with conservative/Republican/MAGA supporter etc. etc. The concept of blasphemy laws take on a whole new meaning, nein?
Islam was, is and always will be a malign, totalitarian evil that seeks the subjugation of humanity or death of those who resist. To publicly state that, despite being a truth written in an ocean of blood over the course of 15 centuries, would be impermissible given the attitude of much of the western world a world that would never have come into being were it not for Judaism and Christianity, that are today on the knife edge of being snuffed out by both the twin evils of Islam and godless atheistic secularism.
With that, we have as I stated the first American Pope, who at first glance will seemingly follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, although there are some mixed signals as you can see from the many links in the Pope section that I will pull from to illustrate:
Many Catholics (and non-Catholics, for that matter) were praying for a more traditional, conservative choice after twelve years of the globalist progressive, Pope Francis. During his pontificate, Francis made landmark declarations that encouraged the Left, including allowing the blessing of people in same-sex unions and calling for more mass migration into already overwhelmed Western nations. One conservative Catholic author even persuasively argued several reasons �Why We Need a Pope From Africa� such as Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, a defender of the embattled, traditional Latin mass (but who, at 80, was a long-shot pick).
Just prior to today�s revelation that a pope had been chosen, Sheryl Collmer at Crisis Magazine online, a publication on Catholic issues, wrote that Francis� tenure was �tragic� and nearly �destroyed� the church. She asked, �Will we have the heart and courage to rebuild the Church after the devastation of the recent past?
Perhaps not, because Prevost�s career was apparently closely observed, if not steered, by Francis himself. According to GB News, �Francis clearly had an eye on him for years.� To summarize from The College of Cardinals Report profile of Cardinal Prevost: in 2014, Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, then Bishop of Chiclayo in 2015. Francis�appointed�him to one of the most influential Vatican posts in January 2023, running the office that selects and manages bishops globally. He held that post until Pope Francis died late last month. On September 30, 2023, Francis elevated Prevost to the rank of Cardinal.
And as Daniel Greenfield observes . . .
Why pick the first American Pope now? Robert Prevost was made Pope Leo XIV as a counterweight to President Trump.
There�s been little ambiguity about the new pope�s politics and less about the overall agenda.
Pope Francis had all but rigged the process to assure another radical successor.
President Trump�s return represents an ongoing institutional crisis. The ideological battleground is going to be the border and Prevost has been chosen to lead the response in the largest sense possible.
Choosing an American Pope is supposed to raise the stakes and elevate a leader with the stature to rally opposition to Trump and more specifically to his immigration policies by invoking the familiar tropes about the need for welcoming in every single migrant.
That�s what this is about. This is less about the long-term future and more about the next four years.
And yet, some are putting a more positive spin on Pope Leo. . .
there are reasons to be hopeful.
The former cardinal, who is from Chicago, is of Spanish, French and Italian descent, which explains his Mediterranean look. He came out in red papal robes, all ornate and embroidered, same as previous popes before Pope Francis, meaning, he's more traditional than Pope Francis, whose desire to appear humble verged on ostentatious, although it wasn't malevolent.
That was him, this is Leo. It suggests he won't be the same as his predecessor.
And the name he picked was reason to be hopeful, too: Leo. The last pope named Leo, Leo XIII (1878-1903) was famous for denouncing socialism. That tells me all I need to hear, but for many, it will be well worth looking at for the nuances -- Leo XIII was also a champion of labor and unions, which, given the realities of the times, seemed like a good idea. As for the socialism, his condemnation of its failures is eternal, and he's the only pope who ever singled out socialism for its evils very specifically by name. . .
. . . His background might give some pause -- I don't know the full story about his citizenship and whether he chose to dump his U.S. citizenship or kept it, or really needed Peruvian citizenship to get around, or simply wanted to be like the Peruvians he ministered to. It isn't that important to a cleric, who is Heaven-focused, so I don't judge. I don't feel optimistic that he was from Chicago, home of Cardinal Cupich who hid his pectoral cross as he gave his blessing to the DNC with its abortion truck outside, and to FARC's sympathizers in the states, but his Mediterranean background suggests he didn't come from the elites. . .
. . .It's early, of course, and everything I am surmising about him could be wrong. We will know more as he makes his address next week. But for now, we can be hopeful that there may be many good and great things about him and he will be an able and confident leader, like Leo XIII.
The ascendancy of populism not only here but abroad is certainly reflected in the reaction of leftists and in what the late Pope Francis had promoted during his tenure vis a vis open borders, the global warming scam, attacks on the free market etc. etc. etc. So is the election of Leo as Daniel Greenfield posits the undergirding of the assault on traditional Catholicism or as Monica Showalter supposes/hopes will he abandon some (let alone most if not all) of Francis' more radical positions to be more in line with the mainstream (or what was and hopefully still is the mainstream) of the faith. Considering that far too many of my fellow Jews have completely rejected traditional Judaism, the teachings of the Torah and the 10 commandments, I'm not going to (and far be it for me to) speculate about Catholics. Of course with the likes of Pelosi and Biden and others of their bent, there are parallels.
We'll have to wait and see. Regardless, it is of course up to all of us as individuals to live an upright, moral and righteous life regardless of who our religious and secular leaders may be. I certainly hope and pray that Leo will lead the Catholic faithful in paths of righteousness and in keeping with Biblical teaching and tradition. Lord knows, HE and we certainly need a Pope and Church like that.
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Have a great weekend.