a triumph of rebranding

So, the Catholic Church has gone from a pope who joined the Hitler Youth as a young man in order to get a scholarship to attend the seminary, to one who was actively complicit in the murders committed by the Argentinian military regime of the 1970s and early 1980s. He not only turned a blind eye to the murder of liberal priests, but reportedly hid political prisoners in his holiday home so that they couldn't be found by an international human rights commission.

But hey, he's named himself "Francis," so he must be all right really!


(Also, his much-touted "support for single mothers" consists of having reprimanded some Argentinian priests for refusing baptism to infants whose parents weren't married. I'm not a theologian, but I don't see how reprimanding what sounds like an obvious theological error [punishing children for their parents' sins] constitutes "support" or any kind of progressivism.)

I'm appalled that the mainstream media coverage, including that in the Guardian (which I read yesterday and which gave me five minutes of thinking "he might not be so bad") has omitted so much of crucial importance. I guess their critical faculties have been dazzled away by visions of dear St. Francis of Assisi surrounded by cute animals.