Just as Ghana cannot afford an economic Maguire, so also can the Catholic Church not afford a spiritual Maguire at its centrer, Declan Hayes writes.
Although Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova now claims that Russia accepts the Pope’s apology over his Chechen and Buryat smears and therefore considers the matter closed, it is anything but. Nor, contrary to her conciliatory statement, can there be constructive, useful or meaningful dialogue between Russia and the Vatican, until the Holy See stops being NATO’s moronic cat’s paw.
Zakharova’s outrage and that of her colleagues arose, recall, because of the truly idiotic, uninformed and downright racist comments Pope Francis made about Chechen, Buryat and other Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Although I covered this outrage here at the time, some questions I raised remain unanswered, the chief one being who supplied Pope Francis with his mis-information on the Buryats and Chechens and how does their mis-information disavow my simpler explanation?
That, of course, is like the famous question of asking if the Pope is a Catholic. It is a rhetorical question as I already supplied the answer. As the Vatican has no direct inroads into the Russian High Command, it has no way of knowing what the Chechens and Buryats do or do not do. The Vatican relying on NATO outlets like Gillian Tett for their news is akin to putting the Pope’s neck in a noose; it is idiotic beyond measure.
It is worse than suicidal as it has the Pope, Christ’s Vicar on Earth, failing all three of the sieves of Socrates (the Greek philosopher, not the late and great Brazilian footballer). That is, NATO’s mis-information was palpably untrue, it was malicious and it served no other purpose than to stoke further fuel on the inferno that is Ukraine and, collaterally, to damage the good name of the Pope and of the Catholic Church not only in Russia, but also in Serbia, China and much further afield as well. Not only has it further unnecessarily damaged relations between Russia, Serbia and allied countries, on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic and allied churches on the other but it will create further formidable obstacles to building peace with justice going forward.
This, unfortunately, is not the Pope’s first rodeo. I wrote here on how the Pope held aloft a Ukrainian Nazi flag, as if it was the Host, the body and blood of Jesus, the Pope holds aloft when saying Mass. I wrote here of how NATO have been using the Catholic Church and its Ukrainian sister church in particular as a Trojan horse to destroy Russia since at least the time of Pope John Paul 11. And I wrote here on how Pope Francis, together with the Anglican cult, MI5 at prayer, is helping to undermine not only the Russian Orthodox Church but Christianity itself, most particularly in the Levant whose Christians, God’s own people, are suffering the most terrible hardships along with their Muslim neighbors, hardships I know as a fact the Pope has been repeatedly briefed on, but which he ignores in favor of Zelensky’s rotten, rump Reich.
Pope Francis, fresh from his Buryat blunder, is now urging us to have a lean Christmas and to send the money we save to Ukraine, by which he probably primarily means the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church that is in full communion with the Vatican, that Pope John Paul 11 made a special point of highlighting when he assumed the Papacy, and that is at the center of much of the Nazi allegations levelled at Zelensky’s rump Reich. Although there are undoubtedly many Ukrainians who could do with help, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is to be commended for any good it does, Pope Francis should not have fallen into this further NATO trap.
Yes, there are people of all denominations and none on both sides of the lines in Ukraine who desperately need our help. But equally so, there are untold numbers of innocents in Yemen, in the Levant and further afield who also desperately need our help and Pope Francis is squeezing all of them out of the picture. I have friends, who support minor and largely unsung efforts in the Philippines, in Zambia, in Mexico and in Peru. Supporters of Glasgow Celtic Football Club send money to the poor of Eastern Thailand, thanks to a lovely scheme one of their supporters got going there. Check out Africa’s wonderful Masaka dancers who dance divinely for dimes; is the Pope seriously arguing that these are children of a lesser God? Should all those Peter’s Pence go to funding Olga Zelenska’s wardrobe instead? What utter madness is he talking?
For my own part, I work money to Syrian based Salesian nun Sr Bridget Doody, whom I interview here. Because of sanctions on Syria, I have to go through circuitous routes not only through this site and my own site as well (which I also use to avoid NATO’s censorship of this site).
Sr Doody works at the Italian Hospital in Damascus, which is under the direct auspices of His Holiness,.Pope Francis. Isn’t it odd that I get money from Lutherans, Communists and Muslims for a hospital under the auspices of the Holy Father, while he asks us to scrimp and save for Clown Prince Zelensky and his over dressed wife? What utter madness is this?
Although I enjoy my occasional cups of tea in the Salesian convent in Damascus, whose nuns cannot be praised highly enough, those nuns have criticized me for paying, out of my own pocket, for heart operations to keep little Syrian girls alive as that money, had it been spent on very basic provisions for other children, would have kept many more children alive.
These are the Sophie’s Choices these good nuns, these godly nuns, make day after day, which children to save and which to allow die. I have seen other nuns make the same choices in their orphanage in Smokey Mountain, Manila, as they wrapped their charges not in swaddling clothes like baby Jesus, but, with their nickels and dimes, in discarded newspapers to try to keep their little bodies warm and, therefore, alive. If Our God Lives, He lives in the hearts and souls of those nuns and those they save. And that is a cold and uncomfortable fact.
And, if God is to live in you, you should give whatever spare money you have to the nuns of Syria, to the nuns of the Philippines, to Africa’s Masaka dancers or to the Thai Tims of eastern Thailand, where it will be put to much better use than whatever the Ukrainian Church would get after Ali Baba and Zelensky’s forty thieves take their considerable cuts.
Witness Trócaire, one of Ireland’s biggest Catholic charities. The money they collected from innocent Irish school children they used to fund women’s propaganda groups in the ISIS Caliphate of East Ghouta, from where Sr Doody’s convent and all of Damascus was systematically shelled for years on end, until Russia’s General Armageddon helped put an end to all that.
Trócaire is not the only Irish group funding NATO’s Syrian terrorists. GOAL, which became Ireland’s biggest and most corrupt NGO thanks to CIA funding under the directorship of Dublin MEP (and NATO shill) Barry Andrews, poured tens of millions of dollars into Syria’s Caliphates. Is Pope Francis saying we should preference GOAL’s Ukrainian scam over the work of the good nuns of Syria, the Philippines and Palestine, where I met the saintly French nuns of the Bethlehem orphanage (where baby Jesus was born) who, in a beautiful meeting of minds, collect euros from French school children they get to team up as pen pals with their orphaned charges?
White Pope, Black Pope
These godly nuns have, at least, the satisfaction that they do not have to contend with the ungodly morons Maria Zakharova has to swat away like the gnats the Buryats have to contend with in their Siberian summers. If the Catholic Church, with the Pope and the Jesuit order at its helm, is to be something more than a Siberian gnat, it has to radically lift its game so that these great nuns, who do God’s great work in all corners of the earth, can continue to be lights in NATO’s darkness. The Black Pope’s Jesuits, among whose members is the White Pope, Pope Francis, is like so much more of the Catholic Church, a male gerontocracy, who not only won’t move quickly enough with the times but who are being infiltrated and outflanked at all levels by the more nimble footed and infinitely more well funded proxies of MI5 and the CIA. To counter this and to get back on the right track, the Catholic Church must radically reform itself and put sure footed people like Maria Zhakarova in positions so that China’s President Xi might take it seriously. It must, in other words, be as diplomatically and organizationally professional and sure footed as are the Russian and Chinese governments. That is the first step.
White Flag, Black Flag
As a Jesuit, Pope Francis must be familiar with the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, the great Basque nationalist, who founded his order and who, with Francis Xavier, their great apostle, made the Jesuits the hallmark of pragmatic professionalism, which were consistent with Loyola’s military training.
In his exercises, Loyola refers to the two standards soldiers rally around in war, our flag, the flag of Christ and that other flag of our enemy, the anti-Christ. Although it is a simple analogy, it is a profound one. One either plays with Team Jesus, Team Good, or one does not.
As a football supporter, who has met Messi and the great Argentinian and Italian teams, Pope Francis has probably seen this video of the Parliament of Ghana laughing at England’s Harry Maguire. Just as Ghana cannot afford an economic Maguire, so also can the Catholic Church not afford a spiritual Maguire at its centrer. When, as is likely, Messi, Mbappe and their teammates once again visit the Vatican to present him with signed shirts and footballs, Pope Francis should raffle those items and give the proceeds to the nuns of Syria, Palestine or the Philippines, the Buryats, the Chechens, the Thai Tims or Africa’s Masaka dancers. Once he gets his selfies with Messi and Mbappe, the Pope should ask the French and Argentine managers for organizational pointers on how to clear out the rot from his own team so that Maria Zakharova and President Xi will regard him and his as solid players for Term Jesus and not as Spiritual Maguires for Team NATO.
By Declan Hayes