The
twenty-four hour week long electronic and print media saturation
coverage of the visit of Pope Francis to a United States of Protestant
and Evangelical Christianity majority brings various suspicious to mind.
Though that was a long time ago, that John F. Kennedy overcame
anti-Catholic sentiment to become president thanks largely to the wealth
and connections of his father, is not the world wondering about being
subjected to unconstrained media projected adulation that borders on
adoration of Catholic Pope Francis during his dramatically highlighted
V. I. P. tour of Washington, New York and Philadelphia, during which he
addressed a joint session of Congress, met with the President, spoke
before the UN General Assembly, at Madison Square Garden, in Central
Park and Philadelphia.
Let’s think. First thing that comes to
mind is that the simultaneous visit of President Xi Jingping of a China
threatening American deep-pockets world hegemony is being nicely
overshadowed and receiving less attention than otherwise. Xi Jingping
recently called for a de-Americanization of the world; not easy, with
the world satellite powered TV sources of information owned and
controlled as they are by American investors in the use of US -NATO
military power and US controlled International Financial Institutions.
Worth
noting also is the inconvenient shutting down of sections of Manhattan
for the in all seriousness announced precautions for the safety of the
Pope’s life drummed up ever deeper fear of an ISIS that was really
created by CIA and its overseas branches in allied nations to attack US
NATO designated enemies Syria (where Assad refuses to resign as
demanded), Shiite in Iraq and Iran and Muslims throughout the Middle
East. (Although this reality hit the front pages of even London tabloids
many months ago, the charade sails on).
Thirdly, the Pope’s
visit blown up to super large proportions makes for a media inculcated
impression that God’s representative on planet Earth is blessing America
while its investors in the profitable use of US Armed Forces go on
destroying nations and peoples in the formerly outright colonially
occupied and plundered nations, most of which were originally wealthier
and more highly cultured and scientifically advanced than their savage
European conquerors.
Media holding up high this Catholic Pope as a
paragon of virtue with God-like authority and a reputation purer than
snow, has to serve well as a form of rehabilitation of the Papacy itself
for the quite substantial amount of people who know of the horrific
role of the church during the early centuries of European genocidal
subjugation, plunder, enslavement and destruction of cultures and
civilizations under the pretense of saving souls in the name of the God
of the Christians, a role Popes have continued to play during the
recolonialism or neocolonization of world led by an elite of speculating
investors on Wall Street.
The career of Jorge Bergoglio, who
has been paraded all week before the TV viewing world audience as and
angelic Pope Francis, an awesome figure, often as not in the usual regal
headdress Popes wore during the Dark Ages of European history, contains
nothing outright criminal like the careers of the Popes of the
Inquisition, however it does seem to reflect some proclivity not to
interfere while the exploited poor are murderously persecuted. Your
Archival Research Peoples Historian did a quick Internet search: ‘Pope
and Videla,’ and chose for his readers from the first thirty entries
that popped up. (General Jorge Rafael Videla was President and dictator
of Argentina during the so called ‘Dirty War’ that took place from
roughly 1974 to 1983, though it should well be dated from 1969, when
military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of
the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance.) Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope
Francis, held the top leadership position in the powerful Society of
Jesus in Argentina from 1973 to 1979.
The Truth Behind Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis ...
www.globalresearch.ca/the-truth-behind-pope...the.../5327049
Mar 16, 2013 - The Truth Behind Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis: Breaking the Silence ...
Photo: Pope Francis with Leader of military junta General Jorge Videla.
"Former
Argentine military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla recently died in prison
while serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity.
Former
Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was announced dead on Friday. At
87, he died while serving life in prison for the abhorrent human rights
abuses he conducted during the span of his ruthless military
dictatorship from 1976-1983.
Gen. Videla became president after
overthrowing Isabel Martínez de Perón, in a coup d'etat. His
dictatorship, referred to as the "Dirty War," is responsible for up to
30,000 disappearances, killings and tortures of subversives. Babies born
into "dissident" families were stolen to give to military families.
…
most of the controversy is based on his inaction towards the junta
military as the leader of Argentina's Jesuits during the Dirty War.
Federico
Finchelstein, an Argentine historian at the New School for Social
Research in New York, told the New York Times that "The combination of
action and inaction by the church was instrumental in enabling the mass
atrocities committed by the junta ... Those like Francis that remained
in silence during the repression also played by default a central role,"
he said. "It was this combination of endorsement and either strategic
or willful indifference that created the proper conditions for the state
killings."
Professor Finchelstein makes a valid point. In a region
where church leaders have been vocal against military juntas in the
past, it is very troubling that Pope Francis remained silent during such
atrocities. It also doesn't help his case that as "the head of the
Argentine Conference of Bishops from 2005 to 2011, Francis resisted
issuing a formal apology for the church's actions during the Dirty War."
Regardless
of the politics behind these accusations, there is a bigger, more
disturbing question we should be asking. Why wouldn't a church leader
step in or at least speak out while thousands of innocent lives were
being kidnapped, tortured, and killed? His [the Pope’s] duty as a
leader of the church is to represent the teachings of Christ, right?
Would Jesus sit idly by while such atrocities are taking place? … to
think that someone who watched thousands of people die could be chosen
as the head of the Roman Catholic Church."
Did Pope Francis Have a Part in Argentina's "Dirty War
Time Magazine, 3/14/2013
http://world.time.com/2013/03/14/the-new-pope-and-argentinas-disappeared-of-the-dirty-war/
Cover Story: Pope of the Americas)
"Since
he was anointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II in Rome in 2000, Jorge
Bergoglio has had to contend with repeated allegations over his actions —
and inaction — in the years of what is called the 'Dirty War.' Those
claims have resurfaced now that he has become Pope Francis, the first
Pontiff from the New World.
The general criticism against him has
been that raised against most prominent personalities of the period of
junta rule: that he perhaps did not do enough at the time to try to stop
the generals, that he did not speak out publicly about the thousands of
desaparecidos — the disappeared who vanished without a trace and whose
mothers protested for answers in a plaza in Buenos Aires.
Bergoglio, as quoted in his own defense in the Time article, rather seems to show himself as an insider of the dictatorship.
“I
never believed [the two priests] were involved in subversive activies,”
Bergoglio said. “But because of their work with some priests in the
slums they were exposed to the paranoia of the witch hunt.” Bergoglio
said he moved fast to save their lives.
“That same night when I heard
of the kidnappings I started to move. I saw Videla twice and I saw
Massera. In one of my attempts to meet Videla I found out who the
military chaplain was who gave mass to Videla and convinced him to call
in sick and managed to be named to replace him.” Bergoglio said that
after the mass he managed to speak to Videla about the case, which
would not have been an easy task at the time, given the climate of fear
that reigned over these issues in Argentina then."
Pope Francis and Argentina's Dirty War: Nine Questions He Needs to Answer
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
22 March 13
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/295-164/16604-pope-francis-and-argentinas-dirty-war-nine-questions-he-needs-to-answer
"Dogged
journalists from Argentina and around the world have raised concern
about the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to become Pope Francis.
Was he, they ask, complicit with the Argentine military that kidnapped,
tortured, raped, killed, and "disappeared" tens of thousands of people
starting even before the coup of March 1976? The victims included two
bishops and as many as 150 priests and nuns, and the atrocities reached
the absolute horror of stealing newborn babies from their mothers and
throwing living prisoners from helicopters and airplanes into the South
Atlantic. ...
Vatican spokesmen dismiss it as old smears spread by
the anti-clerical left. We have heard this spin before, over … the
Church's complicity with the Nazi Holocaust ... Pope Francis needs to
do better than that. If he wants to put the dirty war behind him, he
needs to provide full and convincing answers to nine deeply disturbing
questions.
1. Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, the imprisoned leader of
the military junta, credits Papal Nuncio Pío Laghi, Archbishop Raul
Francisco Primatesta, and other Church leaders with advising the
military junta and helping handle the situation of the disappeared. "In
some cases," the former dictator told Argentina's Revista El Sur, "the
Church offered its good offices and told the relatives to give up
searching for their child because he [or she] was dead." But the Church
only did this, said Videla, "if it was certain that the relatives would
not use the information politically" against the junta. How, Your
Holiness, do you explain such close collaboration?
2. Church
officials in Argentina have repeatedly asked forgiveness for their
failure to speak out against the junta's human rights violations, and
Bergoglio personally called for the Church to do public penance for the
sins of the dirty war. The Church obviously lacked courage and moral
clarity, but it was far from silent. It publicly supported the military
junta. Cardinal Archbishop Juan Carlos Aramburu gave communion and his
blessing to the newly installed dictator, Gen. Videla. Bishop José
Miquel Medina, the head chaplain of the armed forces, and other church
leaders justified torture, while providing chaplains to help the
torturers overcome their moral qualms. In his visit to Buenos Aires in
April 1982, Pope John II publicly embraced Videla's successor General
Leopoldo Galtieri and refused to meet with the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo, who were demanding justice for their disappeared relatives. When,
Your Holiness, will the Church face up to the depth of its complicity?
3.
In 2007, an Argentine court convicted Father Christian von Wernich, a
police chaplain, for his complicity in seven murders, 42 abductions, and
31 cases of torture. According to BBC News, several former prisoners
testified that he used his position as a priest to win their confidence
and then passed what they told him to police torturers and killers. The
former prisoners said that he attended several torture sessions and told
the torturers that they were doing God's work. Von Wernich is now
serving a life sentence. As archbishop, Bergoglio ruled against giving
holy communion to politicians and health care workers who facilitate
abortion, while allowing von Wernich to remain a priest and provide
communion to his fellow prisoners. Does Your Holiness truly believe that
Church doctrine on abortion and contraception is more important to
uphold than prohibitions against torture and mass murder?
4. In a
case directly involving Bergoglio when he was the top Jesuit in
Argentina, the army kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held captive two
of his subordinates who had been living and doing social work in a
Buenos Aires slum. The army held Fathers Orlando Yorio and the
Hungarian-born Franz "Francisco" Jalics blindfolded and in chains for
five months and then dumped them half-naked and drugged into a field on
the outskirts of the city. Soon after, Father Yorio sent the Jesuit
hierarchy in Rome a first-hand report in which he accused Bergoglio of
promising to speak to people from the armed forces and assure them that
the two priests were not working with the left-wing guerrillas. But,
wrote Yorio, Bergoglio spread rumors that we were. "We began to suspect
his honesty," wrote Yorio, who reportedly forgave Bergoglio, but never
withdrew his charges. Would Your Holiness release the late Father
Yorio's full report and your detailed response to it?
5. Father
Jalics made similar charges and has never withdrawn them. Now at a
monastery in Germany, he says he has forgiven Bergoglio and does not
want to comment on the new pontiff's role in what happened. Would Your
Holiness ask him, in the name of truth, to testify about what he knows?
6.
In 1979, Father Jalics was living in Germany and asked Bergoglio to
help him get his passport renewed. Bergoglio made the formal request,
but The Guardian has published a typed note from the foreign ministry
archives that "appears to prove that Bergoglio said one thing and did
the opposite." The note records that Jalics and Yorio
"lived in small
communities that the Jesuit Superior [Bergoglio] disbanded in February
1976. They refused to obey, requesting that they be removed from the
order." According to the note, the information came from Bergoglio,
who recommended that the foreign ministry not renew Jalics' passport.
How, Your Holiness, do you respond to this damning evidence?
7.
Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's best-known investigative
journalists, uncovered the above document and interviewed many of the
dissident voices within the Church, presenting their evidence in his
left-leaning Peronist daily Pagina 12 and his best-selling "El Silencio:
De Paulo VI a Bergoglio." He is also a direct participant in the story,
having shown the courage after the coup to take up arms in the
guerrilla war against the military dictator ...Would Your Holiness ask
your defenders to stop trying to kill the messenger and deal with the
specific evidence Verbitsky offers?
8. Pope Francis has long
talked of making the poor central to the Church, encouraging Christian
charity toward them and criticizing inadequate government and even IMF
policies. But, in line with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he worked to
suppress Liberation Theology, which called for helping the poor to
organize to fight for their own rights. This appears to have been an
underlying issue in his treatment of Fathers Yorio and Jalics and in the
heated divisions within Argentina's Catholic Church. Will Your Holiness
now reopen the debate and allow defenders of Liberation Theology to
speak freely within the Church?
9. Horacio Verbitsky and other
critics are quick to credit Bergoglio with helping many of the junta's
opponents and even hiding them from arrest.
"I know people he helped," said Father Yorio's brother Rodolfo.
"That's exactly what reveals his two faces, and his closeness to the military powers. He was a master at ambiguity." Over
the years, Your Holiness, you have been a reluctant, vague, and often
evasive witness about your role – and the role of your fellow priests –
in the dirty war. Would you now, in the spirit of truth and
reconciliation, give independent journalists and historians access to
Church archives, which – along with in-depth interviews and already
available government archives – will allow them to set the record
straight?"
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the
New Left monthly Ramparts, author Steve Weissman lived for many years
in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now
lives and works in France, where he writes on international affairs.
Reader
Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
------------------------------
------
It
was reported: "Pope Francis urges Catholics in Europe to house
refugees." Good, but what about the refugees themselves fleeing from
CIA created and funded ISIS and other CIA funded and organized
terrorists invading Syrian over three years because its elected
President Assad refuses to step down as demanded by Wall Street’s
beholden President Obama? Searching the Internet does not bring up Pope
Francis speaking out regarding a fifteen year occupation in Afghanistan
by a US coalition that includes every single Caucasian populated nation
in the world; likewise nothing by Pope Francis regarding the US bombing
of dirt poor Yemen and Somalia for years.
As indicated in the title, this history article is not intended to
merely unmask the Pope we are presently being hyped about, but rather to
show that the Papacy has long been an instrument of the wealthy who
rule misrule us and have brutally misruled most of humanity for many
centuries.
Pope Francis, the first ‘Latin
American’ Pope was preceded by Benedict XVI, who in his youth was a
member of the Hitler Youth; one would not necessarily hold that against
him, but for all the proper silence he maintained regarding the US led
colonial powers covert invasion and bombing destruction of a small
African country by its former colonial owners after it had risen from
the poorest colonially exploited nation in Africa to have become by UN
designation the 53rd Highest Quality of Life Indexed nation in the
world, higher than nine European nations, including Russia.
If
one goolges Benedict’s predecessor ‘Pope John Paul II re’ any of the
illegal, murderous and certainly unChristian employ of US military
forces during his reign from end of 1978 through April 2005, it will be
extraordinary if much can be found of the first Polish Pope criticizing,
for example, President Carter helping with aid the Indonesian genocide
in East Timor; Carter giving his permission for Gwangju Massacre in
Korea to go forward; the Carter ordered CIA backed Islamic terrorist
civil war in Afghanistan mid 1979, against a popular women liberating
Socialist government in Kabul; the funding of Osama bin-Ladin; the
Reagan ordered paratroop landing and air and naval bombing invasion of
tiny Grenada; the El Salvador genocide of hundreds of thousands; the US
organized/funded Nicaragua Contra massacres; the US Panama invasion -
death toll one thousand; the US slow destruction of Somalia begun under
Clinton; Afghanistan invaded, occupied, 2001; Venezuela Chavez
government overthrow backed in 2002.
Before the Iraq invasion began
in 2003, the Pope John Paul II "opposed" it, but in May of 2004, while
the invasion of Iraq was taking the lives the tens of thousands and the
bizarre overthrow and kidnapping of President Aristide of Haiti had
taken place, Pope John Paul II accepted the Presidential Medal of
Freedom from a jovial, ‘why me worry’appearing President George Bush
Jr.
It seems a good indication of the priorities of Popes that
while Pius XII excommunicated all those who might vote ‘the wrong way’
in the election of 1948, when the Communist Party of Italy, having led
the fight against the Fascists, was expected to win the 1948 election,
in 1964, the strongest words the well loved and later sainted John XXIII
could muster up during the Cuban missile crisis that threatened the
possible extinguishing of life on Earth was a plea to the American and
Soviet leaders.
Your author was unable to document any reaction
of John XXIII’s predecessor John Paul VI to the blatant US involvement
in the brutal overthrows of popular governments in Brazil and Bolivia,
nor the deadly US invasion and occupation of the Dominican Republic or
the massacre of a half million ‘communists’ in Indonesia in which CIA
was implicated, during his six years as Pontiff.
Three Popes,
Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI and six US Presidents, unmistakably
beholden to the leadership of powerful Wall Street profiteers of World
War Two, oversaw the crucifixion of the population of the soft-spoken
Buddhists farming population of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which the
Vichy French fascist colonial occupation army had run for the Japanese
to the loss of a million starved to death due to commandeered rice crops
to feed the Japanese army.
This article closes with a review tenure of the second Pope mentioned in its title, Pius XII.
The Vatican & the Holocaust:
Pope Pius XII & the Holocaustfrom the Jewish Virtual Library
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html
“Cries for Help
Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.
In
the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked
the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to
keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a
similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.(5)
Within
the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius
XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge
d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to
Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to
death camps.(6)
In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S.
delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the
atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain
"neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative
influence on Catholics in German-held lands.(7)
In late August 1942,
after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian
Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring
to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more
diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting
verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene
patience."(8)
On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote,
"The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."(9)
Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the
Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral
prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it
was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the
Jews.(10)
Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish
government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly
denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least
twice. Pius XII refused.(11)
Papal Reasons & Responses
The
Pope finally gave a reason for his consistent refusals to make a public
statement in December 1942. The Allied governments issued a declaration,
"German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," which
stated that there would be retribution for the perpetrators of Jewish
murders. When Tittman asked Secretary of State Maglione if the Pope
could issue a similar proclamation, Maglione said the papacy was
"unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."(12)
One reason for this position was that the staunchly anti-communist Pope
felt he could not denounce the Nazis without including the Communists.”
Pope
Pius dutifully was silent on the US post WW II War invasion of a Korea
the US had recognized as territory of Imperial Japan during the forty
years from the administration of Teddy Roosevelt through all four of
Franklin Roosevelt in return for Japanese recognition of the Philippines
as US territory. Likewise silent on the overthrow of a democratic all
peninsula Korean government allowed by the departing Japanese, replacing
it first with a US Military government and then installing the mass
murdering dictator Singman Rhee (whose name is never mentioned in
today's South Korea), and the eventual genocidal bombing flat of Korea
South and North by US bombers with the UN flag painted on their
fuselage.
Required Reading for those interested in the main theme of this article.
The Vatican in World Politics,
twice Book-of-the-Month and going through 57 editions, one of the
best-selling books of all time. It has been translated into most
major languages including Chinese, Russian and most recently, Korean -
and on pdf.
Author
Avro Manhattan was the world's foremost authority on Roman Catholicism
in politics. A resident of London, during World War II he operated a
radio station called "Radio Freedom" broadcasting to occupied Europe.
He
was the author of over 20 books. He was a Great Briton who risked his
life daily to expose some of the darkest secrets of the Papacy. His
books were #1 on the Forbidden Index for the past 50 years!!
A short biography of Baron Avro Manhattan
Born
April 6, 1914, in Milan, Italy, of American and Swiss/Dutch parents. He
was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and the London School of
Economics. He was jailed in Italy for refusing to serve in the Fascist
dictator Mussolini's army. While imprisoned in the Alps he wrote his
first book on astronomy.
During the war, Mr. Manhattan operated a
radio station called Radio Freedom broadcasting to the partisans in
occupied Europe. For this service he was made a Knight of Malta. His
aristocratic roots meant that he was a Knight of the House of Savoy as
well as a Knight Templar and a Knight of the Order of Mercedes.
He was a member of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Interplanetary Society.
Jay
Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and
writer; has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries;
articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, Sweden and the
US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly
cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from
Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong's Window
Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his;
Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Kerala,
India; Minority Perspective, UK; Einartysken, Sweden: Saker Vineyard,
Germany; Dissident Voice; Ta Kung Pao; Uruknet; Voice of Detroit;
Mathaba; Ethiopian Review; Palestine Chronicle; India Times;
MalaysiaSun; China Daily; South China Morning Post; Come Home America;
CubaNews; TurkishNews; HistoryNews Network; Vermont Citizen News have
published his articles; 300 of which are available at: click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html
; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung
Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn
co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign:
(King Condemned US Wars) http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/ featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining.
