"Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

quote VATICAN CITY, March 10 (Reuters) - The war in Ukraine is driven by the interests of several "empires" and not just of Russia's, Pope Francis said in an interview published on Friday. Francis said the conflict was fuelled by "imperial interests, not just of the Russian empire, but of empires from elsewhere". He expressed a readiness to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin to call for peace. The pontiff was speaking to Italian Swiss television RSI, in an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday. Extracts were published on Friday by Italian dailies La Repubblica, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera. . . .

Lifted from Yahoo! News
https://news.yahoo.com/1-po...e-war-062906272.html

Talk about Pope Francis doing a "solid" for Vladimir Putin... I'm pissed about these remarks. It's just not his place. Even if this is what he thinks, he's not doing right by his role as "Catholic #1" to barge into the situation in this way.

He should restrict himself to calling for "peace" on universal humanitarian grounds. He shouldn't be offering this kind of political analysis. Even if he's being conveniently vague about "empires", this is an obvious papal "diss" of the U.S. and NATO, if not also the European Union.


I will be disappointed if I'm not soon reading about crowds assembling in front of St Peter's Basilica and chanting "Lock Him Up!" If there's one thing we don't need it's a reckless pope. Lock him up! Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with that.

Disclaimer: I have no "competing interests" in this matter. There's nothing that should be construed about "rinselberg", in so far as the categories of Faith or Religious allegiance(s) or anything of that kind. My remarks are entirely within the secular realm of geopolitics and international relations.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-10-2024).]

Awwww....Not liking the truth ?

Want a kleenex ?

<I havent had enough coffee yet to find an appropriate meme>

First time I have ever heard of the catholic church barging into anything

quote Originally posted by rinselberg: He shouldn't be offering this kind of political analysis.

I suppose it's preferable to having to deal with church brass who've been molesting young boys.

I love the pope... he has a great story... grew up in Buenos Aires, where my mom is from, used drugs, was a bouncer at a night club... turned to God, and has actually lived pious.

I know everyone loves to show videos of when he gets irate at someone, but there's a video I saw where a mentally deranged man came running up to him during mass... broke through security, and he gave the guy a hug, and the guy broke down crying, and he got him help. I can't find it now, but that says a lot... the pope was willing to die, didn't really care at that point.

I know the guy is a socialist, and no, I'm sure as hell not a socialist... but "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." I don't like the man because of his politics, I like him in spite of them.

I like "resurrecting" an old thread, when I see a new report in the media that reminds me of something that I remember had been posted quite some time ago—especially when I was the one who posted it.

It's like a rerun of a TV program that you remember that you enjoyed, but it's been so long that many of the details have faded, and so watching it again is a fresh experience.

Often, the trick is to find the old thread, but in this case, I had no difficulty in using a search function to "smoke it out of hiding."

Here's what just came up in the news:

"Pope Francis’ ‘white flag’ comment is met by criticism from Ukraine and its allies"

quote Ukrainian and allied officials criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, a statement many interpreted as a call for Ukraine to surrender. The foreign minister of Poland, a vocal ally of Kyiv, and Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, both used World War II analogies to condemn the pope’s remarks. And a leader of one of Ukraine’s Christian churches on Sunday said that only the country’s determined resistance to Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, 2022, had prevented a mass slaughter of civilians. In an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI and partially released on Saturday, Francis used the phrase “the courage of the white flag” as he argued that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should be open to peace talks brokered by international powers.

The article continues online.

Susie Blann for AP News; March 10, 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/...86cb34dcae2ab2dade12

And this, from the New York Times:

quote [T]he Vatican [has] also sought to avoid taking sides in the war, in part to preserve the possibility that it could be called on to negotiate a peace deal, a hope many geopolitical analysts consider delusional.

"Pope Says Ukraine Should Have the ‘Courage of the White Flag’"

quote His words have raised questions about whether Francis was suggesting that Ukraine surrender, but a Vatican spokesman said the pope meant “cease-fire and negotiation.”

Jason Horowitz for the New York Times; March 9, 2024.
https://www.nytimes.com/202...aine-white-flag.html


So refreshing!

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-10-2024).]