24.04.2025

Death of an absolute monarch

Pope Francis liked to parade his simple life, his identification with the poor and downtrodden. But, shows Jack Conrad, he turned a blind eye to mass killing and presided over a fabulously wealthy and thoroughly compromised institution

Predictably, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s death, announced on April 21 2025, witnessed an outpouring of official mourning, condolences and appreciation.

Giorgia Meloni, political heir of Benito Mussolini, described pope Francis as a “great man and a great shepherd”. He called on the world to “seek the path of peace, pursue the common good and build a more just and equitable society. His teaching and his legacy will not be lost.”

Donald Trump took to social media, saying: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis. May God Bless him and all who loved him.” Sir Keir Starmer, a self-professed atheist, described Francis as courageous and praised his concern for “the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten”. Narendra Modi, Hindutva chauvinist, said that Francis would be remembered as a “beacon of compassion” and praised him for always looking out for the marginalised. For his part, Isaac Herzog, president of a genocidal Israel, touchingly called Francis a man of deep faith, who “rightly saw great importance in fostering strong ties with the Jewish world and in advancing interfaith dialogue”. And so it goes on and on. No head of state, no prime minister wants to be left out of the unctuous dribblings and burblings.¹

Of course, it is not only the establishment: Bergoglio’s countless statements of sympathy with the suffering of the “lowly, the poor and underprivileged”, his call for the “rich and powerful” to repent, his condemnation of the “subtle dictatorship” of money that “enslaves men and women”, found him (and not only on his death) gaining plaudits from sections of the left, including in this country.

Sections of left

Naturally, there is George Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Britain and a self-declared devout Catholic. He boasted of the audience granted to himself and his wife by His Holiness. Crucially, for Galloway, there is Palestine: “No pope ever before was so engaged with the agony of the people of the Holy Land. Indeed his outstanding efforts for the Palestinians - in the teeth of trenchant hostility both within and without the Vatican - will be a lasting memory of his papacy.”²

He is far from alone. John McDonnell sent condolences to his Catholic constituents and quoted the words of Francis on poverty as “inspiring to us all”: “Poverty is a scandal. In a world where there’s so much wealth, so many resources to feed everyone, it is unfathomable there are so many hungry children.”³ Jeremy Corbyn too: “Pope Francis dedicated his life to the marginalised, displaced and dispossessed. A rare voice for humanity, he spent his final days on this earth calling for peace. Let his enduring legacy - of empathy, courage and kindness - inspire us to build a more humane world for all.”⁴

Worse came in the form of an excruciating Morning Star feature article by Marc Vandepitte, a Belgium ‘official communist’ and all-round China apologist. With the death of Francis, the “world loses not only a church leader, but also a moral compass.” Admittedly, he was no “revolutionary”, on “micro-ethical issues” (!) he continued to adhere to church doctrine.

What are these Vandepitte “micro-ethical issues”? We are not talking about whether or not Catholics should refrain from eating meat on Friday, or telling their children white lies about Father Christmas. No, what Vandepitte is referring to are little matters such as “abortion, homosexuality, contraception, gender”. Still, no worries, “his tone was conciliatory, his style humane”.

However, on “macro-ethical issues” such as war, climate and migration, Francis was “innovative”. Indeed, his “criticism of capitalism was unprecedented for a pope”. In short, Francis was a “voice of moral clarity in a time of great confusion and uncertainty”.⁵

In fact, pleading for peace, condemning naked greed, expressing love for the poor - all constitute bog-standard Catholic themes. In a decaying Roman empire, during the period of high feudalism and with the rise of capitalism, the church preached that the rich had a moral duty to help out their poor brethren; indeed the church itself offered practical help in the form of alms, running schools and hospitals, and providing shelter for the old and infirm. Charity always walks one step behind class exploitation. It should be stressed, therefore, that pope Francis loved the poor only insofar as they remained passive. Primarily, he viewed them as a collection of souls waiting to be saved by the church. His stress lay on religiosity, not obtaining what might be called ‘social justice’. So, he was one of those mildly reforming popes in the tradition of John XXIII (1958-63), who essentially relied on the rich and powerful seeing the light of god’s truth and mending their wicked ways.

Jesuit

Born in 1936, pope Francis was the eldest of five children. His parents, Mario José Bergoglio and Regina María Sívori, were respectable and middle class and seem to have left Italy for political reasons in 1929 to settle in Argentina. Seemingly they had no liking for Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Jorge Mario was bright, hard-working and did well at school. Once he overcame his initial shyness, he loved to tango too. Purportedly after dances nothing happened with the girls other than a chaste goodnight kiss.

Staunchly Catholic, he effortlessly gravitated towards the reactionary populist politics of Catholic Action - an organisation which combined a detestation of liberal capitalism with opposition to secularism and socialism. That meant leaflets, marches, meetings and promoting Catholic social values. He was a member for five years.

It was, though, when he was 21, after recovering from a life-threatening attack of pneumonia, that Bergoglio discovered his true vocation. He became a Jesuit novice in 1958 and took his final vows of chastity, poverty and obedience in 1973 and was duly ordained. Despite occasional setbacks, he progressed up the church’s bureaucratic ladder. In 1992 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. However, he was never in tune with the once modish ‘liberation theology’ and there was a “virtual estrangement from the Jesuits” till his election as pope.⁶

Note, during the 1960s the Jesuits - the largest Catholic male order - shifted their emphasis to working for the poor and what they called ‘social justice’. Naturally, this was not to the liking of military dictatorships in Latin America … nor John Paul II, who, with the help of cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, imposed a ‘white martyrdom’ on priests and lay theologians alike. The Catholic church’s religious orders were thoroughly purged of the liberation theology infection. Dissidents were silenced or expelled.

Bergoglio found himself on the front line of revolution and counterrevolution. Having once been - in the late 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century - amongst the richest five or 10 countries in the world, Argentina spiralled into relative decline. By the 1970s the country was gripped by economic crisis, hyperinflation and falling living standards. The military-civilian dictatorship of Arturo Illia collapsed in 1973 and Argentina’s Bonaparte, Juan Perón, returned from his Spanish exile. He was elected president for the second time. When he died just a year later, in 1974, his wife, Isabel, replaced him as both the figurehead of the Peronist movement and as president.

However, class antagonisms intensified, there were general strikes and political turmoil. Rural and urban guerrilla organisations grew massively and for many, especially the young, promised to bring about a social revolution. Some were Castroite, some Trotskyite, some left Peronist, some left Catholic.

Isabel Perón agreed to unleash the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance death squads against them … and anyone on the left. Egged on by Henry Kissinger, the ‘dirty war’ qualitatively intensified with the March 1976 military coup headed by Lieutenant General Jorge Videla. His junta’s terroristic war of extermination saw between 20,000 and 30,000 killed or disappeared.

Bergoglio headed the Jesuit order in the country from 1973 to 1979 and was widely viewed as sympathising with Videla and his armed forces junta. He was even accused of involvement with the kidnapping of Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, two radical Jesuit priests. He certainly kept any doubts about the Videla junta, if he had them, strictly private. Naturally, he later pleaded that the Catholic church found itself in a “painful situation”. Doubtless, true, but not as painful as it was for those who were arrested, executed, imprisoned, tortured or fled into exile.

In 2000 the Catholic church issued a public apology for its failure to take a stand against the Videla junta: “We want to confess before god everything we have done badly,” Argentina’s Episcopal Conference declared. The hierarchy - ie, Bergoglio - “closed its eyes” to the killing of its own priests ... and some 20,000 to 30,000 others.⁷

Liberal reformer

Those who fondly imagine human liberation coming via the supposedly inexorable forward movement of science and technology will have problems explaining the outpouring of genuine mass grief that followed the April 21 Vatican announcement of the death of Francis. After all, here was an ailing, 88-year-old man, who ruled an institution with an entire history of heresy trials, torture, burnings, child abuse and anti-scientific obscurantism, which blesses, but still refuses to conduct, weddings for gay couples and which bars women from entering its priesthood as a matter of holy doctrine.

Francis was a liberal reformer, perhaps, but only when compared with his immediate two ultra-reactionary predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Even then it was more about form of presentation, rather than substance. Rhetorically he knew how to play to, and please, the naive end of leftish public opinion.

Either way, how can such a man command such popular enthusiasm? One explanation lies in social psychology. People feel anxious, insecure and seek to shelter under the reassuring roof of religion. Laboratory experiments have shown that an increase in a subject’s anxiety and insecurity “makes them say they are more religious”.⁸ Likewise creating conditions where people feel they lack control strengthens their belief in a controlling god. In another study Kurt Gray demonstrates that people “invoke god as a moral agent” to explain negative events.⁹

Almost needless to say, capitalist development engenders precariousness, uncertainty and a tearing destruction of established relationships. For those who need to sell their labour-power to survive, the resulting anxiety goes way beyond the tyranny they daily experience in the workplace: they fear family break-up, they fear their children going off the rails, they fear joblessness, they fear homelessness, they fear being denied proper medical treatment, they fear nuclear war, they fear runaway global warming, etc. And, no surprise, since the 2024 election of Donald Trump, people consider themselves ever more insecure and vulnerable.

Being anxious, insecure and feeling that life lacks meaning is not confined to the masses. Even billionaire capitalists and members of the political elite find themselves victims of events which are beyond their control. Hence they too seek solace, stability, meaning and guidance in religion. Given the requirements of necessity, and the dominant tradition of pragmatism, especially pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon world, there is inconsistency and muddle. Naturally then, while members of the ruling class, and this or that state actor - eg, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and JD Vance - claim to intellectually buy into the complex doctrines of the papal cult, they freely, wantonly, disregard what is personally inconvenient or politically inexpedient.

Ordinary Catholics demonstrably turn a deaf ear to the church, when it comes to their sexual lives. Priests, of course, then solemnly absolve the ‘straying sheep’ at confession. But the gulf separating theology and practice does not chart an inexorable line pointing to the eventual extinction of the Catholic church as an institution - the sort of atheistic wishful thinking argued for by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. There is an inbuilt doctrine-practice gulf. A moment’s thought shows that it could not be otherwise. Neither god nor heaven exist. Religion is a system of reversed and projected reality.

The reactionary reformism of Francis is easy to dismiss: part 13th century dogma, part 21st century vogue. But that very dichotomy actually helps explain what is reassuring, what is attractive about the Catholic church, not least for generation Z, the 18-34 age group.¹⁰ Francis appeared to uphold values that were simultaneously timeless and contemporary. The flock are allowed to admit falling for all the modern temptations. But, given the inevitability of tragic events, the demoralising grind of daily life and the emptying commercialisation of seemingly everything, the Catholic church becomes their rock - an ancient certainty that answers their present-day spiritual needs.

Feudalism

Since at least the 3rd century the Catholic church has claimed to be the living embodiment of the risen Jesus. Yet, though supposedly the depository of god’s grace and truth, the church is in many ways the embodiment of exploitation and oppression. For centuries popes sold high offices with abandon, persecuted opponents, fathered numerous illegitimate offspring, ran brothels and amassed huge riches.

Of course, with the late 20th century, it is the public scandals about child sex abuse within the ranks of its clergy which is the cause of public outrage. A secular organisation would surely have been totally discredited and perhaps even forced to close down, if it admitted, or was shown to have engaged in, such systemic abuse (and a monumental cover-up). Not surprisingly, all of this goes unmentioned by Francis’ numerous establishment friends and admirers. They see the Catholic church as a highly useful political ally, not a morally bankrupt feudal relic.

The Catholic church was, it hardly needs saying, the ideologue, clerk and co-ruler of feudal Europe. Indisputably, only the Catholic church had the ability to take the lead against external threats - either by conversion and incorporation (eg, the Normans) or by “diverting” the feudal appetite for war into crusades against the “heathen”.¹¹ Indeed, the popes were the “organisers of the crusades, the Normans their champions”.¹²

Besides monasticism, retreating from the world and “pure asceticism”, the church was intimately bound up with “administering great wealth”.¹³ Something like a third of all land was under the command of the church. Antonio Gramsci attributes this success and endurance of the Catholic church to the “fact” that it feels “very strongly the need for doctrinal unity of the whole mass of the faithful and strive[s] to ensure that the higher intellectual stratum does not get separated from the lower”.¹⁴ He could have added, though, the formal imposition of celibacy upon the clergy.

This helped ensure unity by avoiding legitimate children and therefore dynastic temptations and the division of church property along the fragmenting lines of heredity. On top of that, every class under feudalism had an interest in sustaining the church - it served monarchs as intellectuals, promoted trade in towns and provided alms for the poor.

Being secular princes in Italy - the most advanced region in Europe, which also contained countless glorious reminders of antiquity - the popes happily sponsored the greatest artists and thinkers of the day. Hence the Renaissance and the reactionary-revolutionary humanism of the popes (humanism originally denoted not the non-divine; rather “studies which are ‘humane’ - worthy of the dignity of man”).¹⁵

Popes, cardinals and bishops opposed the rise of capitalism. Political economy rooted the church in the past. However, that soil had become exhausted. After the last of the crusades the church sank deeper and deeper into corruption, absurdity and its own version of naked greed. Ecclesiastical posts, blessings and indulgences were sold on an ever larger scale. New relics and saints were discovered and extravagantly marketed. In effect the Catholic church became a machine for enriching the papacy. Paradoxically, as the church grew richer, giving to the poor was increasingly begrudging and tight-fisted. Amongst those below, the church became an object of hatred and derision.

Epistemologically there was a natural antagonism between the church’s doctrines and the needs of a rising capitalism. There certainly had to be a break with the church’s scholasticism. In part that happened spontaneously. Advances in astronomy and navigation, the conquests in the Americas, the discovery of a sea route to, and unmediated trade and contact with, India, Indonesia, China and Japan - all created new mental horizons, which in turn thoroughly discredited the church amongst the educated classes.

The introduction of the printing press destroyed the church’s virtual monopoly over knowledge. Lay thinkers quickly left the hidebound priests far behind and came to regard them as amongst the most ignorant sections of the population. Finally, in terms of destroying the church’s intellectual ramparts, there was the heavy artillery of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and the French materialists. State administration increasingly passed from the church elite into the hands of bureaucrats who just happened to be members of the church. As an institution, the church became increasingly superfluous. Conditions were ripe for national schisms and the invention of Protestantism.

Yet, once capitalism had firmly established itself as the dominant mode of production, the Catholic church moved to adapt. It shifted its main source of revenue from indulgences and selling posts, feudal tithes and traditional monastical enterprises on to new foundations: capitalistically renting out real estate and income from investments in stocks and shares.

To the degree the Catholic church assisted in neutralising the working class danger, the legal system, the whole capitalist state apparatus, could be relied upon to defend its riches and privileged role in indoctrinating children in Catholic-run schools. That was the deal, the concordat, the social contract, the quid pro quo. Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum marked a turning point. It was pro-capital, pro-private property, but also cynically claimed to be pro-labour. In Europe and Latin America the Catholic church sponsored Christian-democrat parties and trade unions, preached social justice and simultaneously became an institution within, of and for capitalism.

Right critics

Francis’s criticisms of the excesses of capitalism resulted in a few annoyed responses and brought about a certain friction. Cardinal George Pell, the Australian traditionalist, wrote a notorious memo that circulated anonymously, calling Francis’s pontification a “catastrophe”.¹⁶ Hard-line Zionists in Israel hated him with a passion and, inevitably, accused him of anti-Semitism because, when it came to Gaza, he refused to turn a blind eye.¹⁷ Former Catholic Marjorie Taylor Green seemed to positively celebrate his death: “Evil is being defeated by the hand of god.”¹⁸ However, papal sympathy for the poor, criticising unbridled greed and warnings about runaway global warming, it hardly needs saying, were intended to prop up, not undermine, the capitalist system.

Fundamentally an international organisation - it has national sections - the Catholic church, once stripped of its diminutive territorial dimension by Italian unification in 1870, has sought to stabilise the capitalist global order by promoting a counterrevolutionary peace. That was the effective content of Francis’s comment about Nato “barking at Russia’s door”.¹⁹ In that same spirit, and equally ineffectively, Benedict XV said more or less the same thing during the bloodbath of World War I.

Showing its moral worth, in the 1920s and 30s, Pius XI and the Catholic church shamefully stood aside as Mussolini and then Hitler imposed their fascist dictatorships. Just as Bergoglio did with Argentina’s Videla junta. These regimes were seen as antidotes to the forces of communism and the revolutionary working class. Not that there was political indifference. The Catholic church actively backed Franco’s “crusade for god and Spain”: it then formed the “second pillar” of his state.²⁰

Bergoglio testified in two separate cases that he did not know what was going on with the AAA death squads. Obvious perjury, and to boot, a violation of the ninth commandment! Pius XII adopted a similar position in World War II. This too involved maintaining a criminal diplomatic silence. The Nazi extermination campaign was never condemned - though in 1943 Himmler’s black tornado hit Rome itself.²¹

Seeing the French Revolution’s emancipation of the Jews as a “tragic mistake”, the papacy regarded their disenfranchisement by Nazi Germany and Vichy France as “a positive step forward”.²² Meanwhile, showing where the loyalties of the church lay, Pius XII aggressively and relentlessly issued instructions against Stalin, the Soviet Union and ‘official communism’. One of Pius XII’s last pronouncements was a call, Ad apostolorum principis, which urged Catholics to resist the Maoist regime in China.

During the early 1960s John XXIII did advocate east-west détente - in the age of the nuclear bomb, that helped promote the rapid growth of Catholic-pacifist organisations like Pax Christi. Indeed there was a definite rapprochement with the Soviet bloc. Eg, making amends, bishops in Cuba announced it was no longer the duty of Catholics to pray for counterrevolution. They also came out with belated opposition to the hated US blockade and recommended guarded cooperation with the Castro regime.

If one thing concerns the Catholic church above all else, it is self-preservation. Certainly, as an institution which is acutely sensitive to history, possesses unequalled international connections and enjoys a truly global, 1.4 billion, popular following, the Catholic church has learnt how to manage the transition from one political order to another, even one socio-economic order to another. So, when the post-World War II balance of forces appeared to be tilting in the direction of bureaucratic socialism, the Catholic hierarchy adjusted accordingly. As it turned out, an error of judgment.

By the early 1970s, bureaucratic socialism had lost much of the dynamism it once possessed. There were unmistakable signs of decomposition for those who could see. Bureaucratic socialism proved to be not a mode of reproduction, but a dead end. Karol Józef Wojtyla had an insider’s view of the whole process and wanted no more to do with accords and compromises. Indeed, as John Paul II he swung the whole weight of the Vatican machine behind the revived cold war policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. ‘Human rights’ was the ‘roll back’ mantra of both presidents. Naturally then, John Paul II presented himself as an indefatigable defender of ‘human rights’ too. A claim which should not be taken at face value.

Though no Nazi sympathiser, John Paul II desperately wanted to draw a sanitising veil over the disgraceful role played by the Catholic church in the 1920s and 30s. Eg, he took the lead in moves towards canonising José María Ecrivá, the pro-fascist reactionary who in 1928 founded Opus Dei. His own fast track to sainthood was, of course, in part, a posthumous reward for his role in ending the ‘evil empire’. That is what he will most be remembered for by the ruling classes.²³ And there can be no denying it: John Paul II - now patron saint of Poland, World Youth Day, young Catholics, and families - did play a lead part in defeating bureaucratic socialism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. As detailed by Carl Bernstein, he negotiated and agreed a “secret alliance” with the Reagan administration and through priests and other agents helped channel $50 million of CIA funds into the coffers of Solidarność.²⁴

Without the Catholic church perhaps things might have taken slightly longer. But not by much. Even under Stalin himself, a section of the bureaucracy hankered after capitalism - not only as a socio-economic regulator, but as a means to put politically obtained privileges onto reassuringly solid legal foundations as private property. So it is facile to credit John Paul II as being responsible for the ‘fall of communism’ - any more than Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. The unviability of these regimes made collapse inevitable.

Services rendered

Despite using the pulpit to promote so-called bourgeois democracy in eastern Europe, it should never be thought that the Catholic church practises what it preaches. Leonardo Boff - the Brazilian liberation theologian - calls it a “spiritualist absolute monarchy”.²⁵ Indeed the Catholic church was consciously constructed in imitation of the Byzantine empire. Till the 15th century popes claimed, on the basis of a crudely forged imperial document, Donation of Constantine, to be the direct source of spiritual and temporal power. The Catholic church remains in many ways unaltered - St Augustine still exercises a powerful ideological influence. As recommended by him, it aspires to an alliance between civitas dei and civitas terrena: in other words the ‘city of god’ and the dominant conservative states. Paul is quoted in scriptural justification: “… there is no authority except from god, and those that exist have been instituted by god. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what god has appointed”.²⁶

Prior to Italian unification in 1870 the bishop of Rome was an earthly prince with all that that entailed: not only territories and glorious buildings, paintings and music, but prisons, torture chambers, garrisons of mercenaries, and wars. However, papal authority has always been primarily ideological - in religious terms its unique relationship to the kingdom of heaven. The pope is officially described as the “vicar of Christ” on earth.²⁷ A notorious vote by Vatican I in 1870 - obviously a low point in terms of papal self-confidence - decided that the pope could issue infallible pronouncements. An extraordinary doctrine, which still stands, though it is rarely, if ever, invoked nowadays.

Like feudal monarchs, popes surround themselves with obsequious advisors. There is no legislature in any meaningful sense. The general council, the college of cardinals and the synod of bishops are not sovereign bodies. The general council is first and foremost the pope’s way of constituting an “extraordinary governance”.²⁸ He sets and controls its agenda and conclusions. As he does with the synod of bishops. The college of cardinals has the most power - it does, after all, elect the pope. Yet every one of them is a papal appointee!

So an incumbent pope, at the very least, strongly influences who will succeed him. If he lives long enough, it amounts to self-perpetuation. Francis picked 80% of the cardinals who will chose his successor.²⁹ The pope also appoints the bishops - paradoxically, because of democracy and the looser ties between church and state, this ancient rule has nowadays, in general, been normalised (feudal kings, absolute monarchs and fascist, military and Stalinite dictators thought that such appointments should be within their remit).

Bishops rule over their own particular diocese. Each is a little pope. Every five years they report back to their master in Rome. Besides these national bishops, the pope has available to him parallel organisations. Eg, the Franciscan, Benedictine and Dominican and other monastical orders, the Jesuits, and mixed bodies such as Opus Dei. As to the Vatican’s vast web of trusts and business fronts, they are run by the pope, using a wide body of specialists within the papal curia.

There can be no doubt, by the way, that the Vatican is fabulously wealthy. In terms of property alone, one estimate gives it a net worth of $316 billion in “visible titles” and around another $2,623 billion in “hidden” assets. Of course, no-one really knows - there are no published accounts.

1. Reuters April 21 2025.↩︎

2. www.facebook.com/GeorgeGallowayOfficial/photos/the-passing-of-pontifex-is-a-cause-of-deep-sadness-to-gayatri-galloway-and-i-and/1211973996963650.↩︎

3. x.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1914252224458371336.↩︎

4. x.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1914289474445431004.↩︎

5. M Vandepitte ‘Pope from the periphery’ Morning Star April 22 2025.↩︎

6. See A Ivereigh The great reformer: Francis and the making of a radical pope New York NY, 2024.↩︎

7. The Guardian March 14 2013.↩︎

8. web.archive.org/web/20100524060829/www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2010/05/17/do-anxiety-and-insecurity-turn-people-to-religion.↩︎

9. patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2009/12/someone-to-blame-when-disaster-strikes.html.↩︎

10. Well, that and mass migration, in particular from eastern Europe - see www.thetablet.co.uk/news/survey-shows-rise-in-gen-z-catholic-church-attendance.↩︎

11. S Runciman A history of the crusades Vol 1, Harmondsworth 1965, p87.↩︎

12. K Kautsky Thomas More and his utopia London 1979, p46.↩︎

13. M Bloch Feudal society Vol 2, London 1965, p345.↩︎

14. A Gramsci Prison notebooks London 1973, p328.↩︎

15. P Murray and L Murray The art of the Renaissance London 1971, p10.↩︎

16. apnews.com/article/pope-francis-critics-fef5eb221e1a44a15fa7bb9aa83b9d73.↩︎

17. www.middleeasteye.net/trending/reactions-israel-death-pope-francis.↩︎

18. x.com/mtgreenee/status/1914329322376356347.↩︎

19. www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-nato-cause-ukraine-invasion-russia.↩︎

20. J Fusi Franco - a biography London 1987, p76.↩︎

21. For a withering critique of the inter-war papacy, see J Cornwell Hitler’s pope London 1999.↩︎

22. JK Roth and C Ritter Pope Pius XII and the holocaust London 2002, p195.↩︎

23. Not by George Galloway presumably - he describes the end of the Soviet Union as the “worst day in my life”. See www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/16/iraq.interviews.↩︎

24. Time February 24 1992.↩︎

25. leonardoboff.org/2012/09/23/the-origin-of-the-popes-monarchic-absolutist-power.↩︎

26. Romans xxii,1-2.↩︎

27. www.newadvent.org/cathen/15403b.htm.↩︎

28. EO Hanson The Catholic church in world politics Princeton NJ 1987, p62.↩︎

29. www.axios.com/2025/04/21/pope-francis-named-college-cardinals-successor.↩︎