Pope Francis née Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who practices an ecclesiology tailored to the spirit of the times, could easily be mistaken as Joe Biden in a white cossack and skull cap. They share an imperious disposition that takes delight in overturning or diminishing the decrees of their predecessors, overregulate their administrations with orders and encyclicals, are vindictive in their treatment of ideological opponents, look unfavorably upon conservative American Catholics, believe their foundational documents are out of step with modern times, and are hell-bent on transforming their sovereignties. They are both vaccinistas pushing COVID jabs, and climate hypocrites unfazed by their own globetrotting carbon trails as they gaslight their flocks over temperatures, tides, and net zero deadlines. Comfy and guarded in their castle keeps, they are tone deaf to the consequences of open border migration, and exhibit an affective tolerance of regimes that give lip service to religious freedom and human rights.
As ideological bedfellows, Bergoglio has encouraged Joe Biden to continue taking Communion at Sunday Mass, despite his being a passionate advocate for infanticide and the capo di tutti capi for a global wave of human trafficking and child endangerment. Recently, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone barred House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving the Sacrament for her pro-abortion stance. One month later in Rome, Bergoglio publicly humiliated his own prelate by granting the former speaker a private audience and permitting her Communion at a Vatican Mass.
Were it not for his pastoral rearing in the cross currents of politics and Catholicism in Latin America, the ambiguous character, progressivism, and obscure apostolic exhortations of il Papa Francis, would have theologians in a pickle. Bergoglio ascended his Buenos Aires archdiocese as an ordained member of the Society of Jesus, an order identifying its clerics with the initials ‘SJ.’ Founded in the sixteenth century by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, it organized along a military-style chain of command, with a constitution pledging unwavering obedience to the pope, even unto martyrdom. Early Jesuits spread throughout the Old and........