I’m not a Catholic and I totally reject all the creation myths, legends and rituals associated with the Christian religion. However, when a Pope comes along who reminds his fellow Catholics that their revered spiritual leader apparently cared deeply about the poor, the weak, the down trodden, the lame, the forgotten, and that they should follow his example … he’s got my support.

Is a cat that refuses to kill mice a bad feline?

Is a Pope that refuses to burn witches a bad Christian?

Seems like according to some here, the worst Pope ever was... Jesus!
(no, not that rational previous Pope who in self-preservation-mode joined the Hitlerjugend, then the Nazi-German anti-aircraft forces, unlike this stupid no-good Jesus who for the love of all and their redemption allowed his body to be crucified)

Was Jesus wearing the robes of Christianity?

Paul1405,
What you call JB are not the half-baked academic Woke High rise dwelling CJB I referred to. Your racist interpretation is nothing more than a very opportunistic airing of your racist mentality that is totally irrelevant to our debates.

Rocco Loiacono (‘Pope Francis the Catastrophic’) has the measure of the far-Left Pope Francis as he “balances up the fawning eulogies”.

Francis was:

. Called Machiavelli at the seminary
. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires he was known as a “master of manipulation”.
. He was a virtue signaller “par excellence” - dispensing with his driver and travelling by bus - accompanied by a photographer recording his ‘goodness’.
. His election to Pope was possibly rigged by the secretive ‘St Gallen mafia’ to change the direction of the Church and bring it into the modern world - as though it had to conform to the ‘modern’ world.
. He was no reformer, continuously issuing edicts to cement his authority, and getting rid of heads of religious orders who stuck to religious teachings.
. George Pell wrote of a “‘toxic nightmare’ of the ‘Synod on Synodality’, stating that it was ‘largely irrelevant to the preaching of the gospel and the threat of decline, being more concerned with redistribution of power’”.
. Reforms were “disastrous”, reducing the Curia to a “business” that provided assistance to “clients” as if it was a multinational enterprise, and not a ecclesial body.

Francis stuck his nose into everything political from illegal immigrants, to climate change, to Covid jabs - which, he opined, were a “moral imperative”. He welcomed LGBT activists to the Vatican, jabbering “who am I to judge?” when his answer is in the Bible.

Francis was also a hypocrite on the matter of clerical sexual abuse.

This man was the worst possible Pope at a time when the Catholic Church and Christianity in general is being denigrated by the ignorant and the evil

The politicisation of the churches in the hope that it would make them relevant to the new generations and therefore bolster their waning position and power has been an utter failure.

I'm sure the evangelical mission continues to be paramount in the lower ranks of the various church's clergy, but in most cases the established churches now act as little more than very wealthy and powerful NGO's. The wealth they now luxuriate in and the power they have, such as it is, was derived from an era when churches really did matter.

Of coarse, in places like Africa and Southern America, things are somewhat different and the Vatican still holds significant sway.

However, elsewhere, the churches have lost their significance to the general populace which has seen the rise of any number new-age religious movements, still Christian, still vaguely adhering to the tenets of John 3:16, but not in the slightest connected with or controlled by Canterbury or the Vatican. It is now estimated that there are approximately 450 million Christians who no longer consider themselves part of the establishment churches.

Francis has now obtained his final promotion and moves on. But it seems he's stacked the list of Cardinals to ensure his views will remain those of the establishment Catholic Church. Their church - their call. But I suspect that what remains of the Church in 2200 will look back at this era as the time when they lost all relevance to the majority of Christians.

Trumpster,

Do you think Pope Francis seen your man Donald as the Antichrist? The false messiah who will claim to be a savior, but will reign over a terrible period in human history, upsetting the world, and casting a shadow of darkness over the whole planet! I don't think the Pope liked your man Donald terribly much, maybe he seen him for what he is.