In his homily during the daily Mass at the Vatican Tuesday, Pope Francis likened himself to the suffering Christ who was crucified because “the people were deceived by the powerful.”
Speaking from Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City, “the Dictator Pope”* went on to say that his response to the “Great Accuser” would (continue to) be “silence and prayer.”
According to the Vatican News Service, “the Pope encouraged pastors to imitate Jesus in being near to people” rather than the powerful or ideologues who “poison souls.”
While most Christians would say Christ’s authority comes from God the Father, Pope Francis argued that it comes from the people because “he spent most of his time on the road, touching, embracing, listening and looking at the people in the eye.”
“He was near them,” the pope said. “This is what gave him authority.”
Pope Francis also pointed out that these same people would go on to yell “crucify him,” and that Jesus compassionately remained silent because “the people were deceived by the powerful.” The pontiff added that the response to the betrayal was silence and prayer. He again referred to Satan as “the Great Accuser” attacking his innocent bishops:
Here the shepherd chooses silence when the “Great Accuser” accuses him “through so many people.” Jesus “suffers, offers his life, and prays.” Pope Francis said. That prayer carried him even to the Cross, with strength; even there he had the capacity of drawing near to and healing the soul of the repentant thief.
As most Christians know, Jesus was silent because he was fulfilling his purpose as the ultimate sacrifice for sin — the perfect and without blemish “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Our “suffering” pope’s purpose seems to be to take away the sins of his unrepentant prelates — by not talking about them.
This risible homily came one day after embattled Cardinal Donald Wuerl arrived in Rome to discuss his resignation with the pontiff. Wuerl, like Pope Francis, has been credibly accused of covering up priestly abuse and lying about it
* The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy purports to be the inside story of the most tyrannical and unprincipled papacy of modern times.
The Dictator Pope by Marcantonio Colonna—pen name of Henry Sire—has rocked Rome and the entire Catholic Church with its portrait of an authoritarian, manipulative, and politically partisan pontiff. Occupying a privileged perch in Rome during the tumultuous first years of Francis’s pontificate, Colonna was privy to the shock, dismay, and even panic that the reckless new pope engendered in the Church’s most loyal and judicious leaders. The Dictator Pope discloses that Father Jorge Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) was so unsuited for ecclesiastical leadership that the head of his own Jesuit order tried to prevent his appointment as a bishop in Argentina. Behind the benign smile of the “people’s pope” Colonna reveals a ruthless autocrat aggressively asserting the powers of the papacy in pursuit of a radical agenda.
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