A former Knight of the Order of Malta, Henry Sire was expelled after publishing The Dictator Pope. He gave an interview to Gloria TV, taken up by Aldo Maria Valli on his blog on December 10, 2021. There are several assertions about the essential role that the Argentine origin of the pope plays in his pontificate.
Question: “Francis loves to hide behind contradictions, for instances, by calling abortion a hit job and by calling the abortionist Emma Bonino one of the ‘great Italians.’ What ‘tactics’ is behind all this?”
Answer: “This again is typical Peronism, throwing out contradictory signals to opposite parties. An Argentinian would understand it perfectly well, but to the rest of the world it appears incomprehensible.”
Further, Henry Sire does not hesitate to affirm the following: “Francis has no policy but to win the applause of the modern-day elites by following every fad of theirs: climatic alarmism, uncontrolled immigration, an imitation Marxism which is in fact in the service of modern ‘woke’ capitalism.”
“If you look at Bergoglio’s record before he became pope, he showed certain ‘popular’ sympathies, in the sense that he allied himself with the trade unions, etc., but he did nothing for the really poor in Argentina, and he has been the same as pope. His policy is simply to press certain linguistic buttons, and the media reacts slavishly, depicting him as the champion of the poor, for whom in practice he does nothing.”
Go here to read the rest. The Pope promised to be a Pope of the Peripheries. What he has actually done is be the Pope of a very sick Argentinian political culture where strife and division produce only power for the caudillo. A tin pot pontificate, a true symbol of our lost times.
Sigh, but to paraphrase a famous general; “You have to fight the war against evil with the pope we’ve got.”
Argentina does have a sick political culture and he describes some of it. See, however, the remarks of Wm. Ascher on the dynamics of Argentine politics during the period running from 1943 to 1983, where the state was quite penetrable and deferential to pressure groups. Ascher’s rhetorical question was “What kind of military government caves in to the butchers’ union?” Argentina’s, ca. 1971. See also the American Universities Field Staff study of Argentine politics published in 1963. Their assessment was that Argentine political culture was such that people saw institutions of state as a means of taking income away from my adversaries and giving it to my group.
Keep in mind, in 1928, Argentina was once of the world’s affluent countries – a peer of Germany, France, and Scandinavia (though not quite a peer of Switzerland or the Anglosphere). Now it’s a middle income country which has been overtaken by every part of Europe bar the Ukraine and some of the Balkan states, as well as the tigers of the Far East and the more dynamic Latin American economies (Panama, Uruguay, Chile, and, given a few more years, the Dominican Republic).
Now, think about the world we live in, where the principal public health officer of these United States takes orders from the hag in charge of the teachers’ union. Where the flag ranks of the military have decayed into a hockey puck convention. Where the courts and the federal police have decayed in a weapon to be used by one party against another. Where the federal legislature cannot pass a properly formatted budget and runs huge deficits. Where the central bank destroys price stability by financing unsustainable public expenditure. We are living in Argentina right now.
One other thing. Peron is a fairly singular figure in Argentine history. The military regimes which ran the country for most of the 40 year period in question we’re led by men who had acquired an institutional position. None of them brought anything particularly distinct to the table and none of them effectively addressed Argentina’s problems in the realm of political economy. Their one bloody messy success was suppressing the country’s superabundance of terrorist groups during the period running from March 1976 to December 1979. The end result was good, but there was horrendous collateral damage done during the effort.
I think I understand your point Don L but I fear this pope is too far over the line for tolerating ignoring… what a terrible position his foolishness puts us all in who like to defend our Church! And for the sake of all our poor priests caught in his squeeze.
“Sigh, but to paraphrase a famous general; ‘You have to fight the war against evil with the pope we’ve got.’ ”
What if that Pope is on the side of the evil?