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JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO, the Bishop of Rome who adopted the papal name of “Francis”, continues to publicly demonstrate that he is closer to Marx than to Christ. This time, similar to other occasions, it is showcased with Cuba. This past Monday marked the first-year anniversary of the 11th of July Cuban Uprising. On that momentous occasion, hundreds of thousands of Cubans protested for basic natural rights and demanded the end of communist tyranny. The actions of those two days of mass demonstrations throughout the island were met with the customary sadistic exercise of state terrorism by the ruling Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. Pope Francis adamantly stepped forward, again, and served as a premier apologist for the criminal Castro regime, illegitimately in power since 1959.
Univision’s María Antonieta Collins and Valentina Alazraki interviewed the Supreme Pontiff that very day. They requested from the Pope a message to the Cuban people. The obvious relevance of the reporter’s solicitation was the ensuing barbaric crackdown carried out by Castro-Communism in the aftermath of 11J, a tragedy that is still in motion. Moreover, the overarching fact that the same regime has held absolute power for over 63 years was important.
This conveyed, to the figurative leader of the Catholic Church, a golden opportunity to distance himself from previous shameful moral lapses. Pope Francis would be able to potentially expiate his sins for coddling up atheistic and materialist communist regimes. The sovereign of the Vatican state, however, just could not do it. Bergoglio could not break his umbilical cord with Marxism. Not even at his 85 years of age.
“I love the Cuban people very much. I had good human relations with Cuban people”, Pope Francis said. Then barefacedly, bearing no sign of embarrassment or sense of moral prudence and sidelining his role as the temporal high figure of Roman Catholicism, Bergoglio added and confessed that “with Raúl Castro, I have a human relationship.” During the interview, the pope emphasized that Cuba “is a symbol” and “has a great history.” By “Cuba” the chief pontiff really means the communist Cuban Revolution, its regime, and what it has done and does to promote global socialism. This is abominably scandalous. The Bishop of Rome has disgraced himself again. But, more importantly, he betrays the institution he represents, the faith he is supposed to uphold, and above all else, lucidly reveals his impious credentials.
Dictator Raúl Castro was personally responsible for dozens of arbitrary executions of fellow guerrillas during the campaign to overthrow the authoritarian regime of Fulgencio Batista. Once in power, Bergoglio’s Cuban friend directly commandeered the mass killings of hundreds of Cubans without any due process. The communist regime that was installed by the Castro’s has murdered thousands of people in Cuba, imprisoned hundreds of thousands of its citizens at different intervals, destroyed millions of lives, and pillaged billions of dollars worth of property.
In Bergoglio’s native Argentina, Marxist terrorist movements were trained, abetted, and logistically supported by Castro-Communism. Thousands of the pope’s countrymen were killed, tortured, and injured. In Latin America as a whole, these figures are in the hundreds of thousands. If one includes the mass exoduses, the political prisoners, and the anguish of family separations, the Castro regime’s victim tally would be in the millions. It is morally reprehensible for anyone, especially the titled head of the world’s largest Christian church, to consider a vile tyrant and the system he helped build, a “friend”.
Marxism, a brand of socialism that became its hegemonic force by the time of the Second International, is not just about atheism. The ideology developed by Marx and Engels took the Hegelian principle of dialectics and spun it on its head. Claiming to read the tea leaves of history as determined by socioeconomic power dynamics, Marxism assigned itself the task of attempting to replace God and the transcendental order. Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, a vicious assault on Christianity, was the conduit that Marx used to break from Hegel and launch his political religion. Prominent communists such as Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, and the Frankfurt School were militants in Marx’s war against God.
Between 1849 and 1937, twelve papal encyclicals, written by five popes, condemned communism and socialism. Christianity and Marxism are diametrically opposed. So, how can Pope Francis find comfort with enemies of God? Pope Pius X forecast the work of individuals such as Bergoglio. In his 1907 papal encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, he wrote, “they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within.” May the bond Bergoglio shares with communists extend into the afterlife. There he will find company with Fidel, Mao, and Stalin in a very unpleasant place.
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Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.