. . . over the cliff . . . of the panic-stricken of the world . . . 

ROME – On Thursday top Vatican officials hailed Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, recently named TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” for her environmental advocacy, as a “great witness” of Church teaching on care for creation and the human person.

They believe in God the cruel mischief-maker, punishing His children with an early end of the world as we know it.

via Vatican calls Greta Thunberg ‘great witness’ of Church’s environmental teaching

And for letting us never forget his contempt for ideas and their adherents.

ROME – Pope Francis appeared to flatly reject proposals in some theological circles to add “co-redemptrix” to the list of titles of the Virgin Mary, saying the mother of Jesus never took anything that belonged to her son, and calling the invention of new titles and dogmas “foolishness.”

“She never wanted for herself something that was of her son,” Francis said. “She never introduced herself as co-redemptrix. No. Disciple,” he said, meaning that Mary saw herself as a disciple of Jesus.

Mary, the pope insisted, “never stole for herself anything that was of her son,” instead “serving him. Because she is mother. She gives life.”

“When they come to us with the story of declaring her this or making that dogma, let’s not get lost in foolishness [in Spanish, tonteras],” he said

Ipse dixit.

via Pope calls idea of declaring Mary co-redemptrix ‘foolishness’

If that.

Vatican City, Dec 10, 2019 / 03:50 pm (CNA).- The Italian businessman responsible for investing millions of Vatican funds owned a stake in an online options trading company fined in 2016 by the Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors.

Raffaele Mincione, through whom the Vatican’s Secretariat of State has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from the faithful, bought in 2015 a 5% stake in EZTD Ltd, an Israeli-based company known as EZTrader.

Through a privately arranged sale, instead of on the open market, Mincione paid only $.25 per share for his stake in the company, while the publicly listed share price was $5.10. For only $1.6 million, he acquired a stake in EZTD valued on the market at $32 million.

Etc.

Outside auditors were fired several years ago.

And Francis remains in see-no-evil mode, ranting about helping poor people.

via Vatican’s investment manager Raffaele Mincione backed company that ‘misled investors’

Pastors will accompany the announcement with a warning: Only, say 10%, of what you give will will go to poor people.

Hey, they want to keep their jobs and who can blame them?

via Vatican Uses Donations for the Poor to Plug Its Budget Deficit – WSJ

Unsuprisingly, we must fear. Has he been virtue signaling, or is he over his head as a CEO?

VATICAN CITY—Every year, Catholics around the world donate tens of millions of dollars to the pope. Bishops exhort the faithful to support the weak and suffering through the pope’s main charitable appeal, called Peter’s Pence.

What the church doesn’t advertise is that most of that collection, worth more than €50 million ($55 million) annually, goes toward plugging the hole in the Vatican’s own administrative budget, while as little as 10% is spent on charitable works, according to people familiar with the funds.

Woe.

via Vatican Uses Donations for the Poor to Plug Its Budget Deficit – WSJ

Why indeed?

Evo Morales, who fled to Mexico after resigning as president, may not be missed in Bolivia but his absence will be felt at the Vatican.

One of the most curious aspects of the first Latin American pontificate is that Morales enjoyed the status he did. He was the Holy Father’s favourite leader in the Americas.

Which was passing strange, as he was a tyrant.

He did some good things. But typical of his type, and when the going got tough for his programs, he got tough.

Latin American populists of both right and left invoke the people but are less keen when the people take a different view.

Morales demonstrated ruthless tendencies early on, suppressing opponents, seizing control of the courts and using the electoral authorities for his own benefit.

He promulgated a new constitution that had presidential term limits, but after being re-elected twice thought he would like to run again.

These guys. When they don’t get what they want, what they have decided is best for the so-called citizens, they pull out the stops and make them do it.

Like Francis, throwing away the Gospel-and-doctrine rule book to make things happen — throughout the world. He will close you down if you buck him, and Commonweal Mag and other leftists applaud or ignore it.

Morales played hob with election rules and the constitution and refused to leave the country, and . . .

. . . people took to the streets in massive protests. Morales first dismissed them, then invited observers from the Organization of American States to investigate.

When they reported that there were too many irregularities to make the elections credible, the protests increased.

Only the military could quell the growing disorder and declined to shoot the citizenry to protect Morales. When the military leadership “suggested” that it was time for Morales to go, he resigned and fled to Mexico.

The pope objected, right? Wrong. The papal mouth remained closed when his friend did obviously bad things.

After all,

Morales [had] met Pope Francis six times in six years. At the final meeting he felt comfortable enough to greet Francis as “brother”.

In 2015, the papal visit to Bolivia was crowned by a fiery populist address by the Holy Father to the World Meeting of Popular Movements.

Morales was seated beside Francis as the Holy Father employed the high-octane rhetoric on economics favoured by Morales.

Brothers indeed. He’s my kinda pope, said the one, my kinda dictator, said the other.

Ladies and gentleman and fellow Catholics, we gotta left-wing pope — a dictator pope as one writer put it, a political pope as another put it.

During the crisis following October’s rigged election, Bolivia’s bishops took a strong line against Morales and his corruption of the election. The Holy See was more muted, following the pattern of the last several years in Venezuela.

Is it not hard to take such a pope seriously?

Oh, and there was the Marxist crucifix, . . .

. . . that remarkable moment in Bolivia, instantly symbolic, when Morales presented the Holy Father the blasphemous hammer-and-sickle crucifix, the meaning of which the Holy See’s communication apparatus has not adequately explained to this day.

And that pagan statue business during the recent Amazon synod:

Morales’s gifts keep on giving. He is a devotee of the Pachamama, attending ritual sacrifices in her honour and promoting her cult.

Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register tweeted that Morales was a “key figure” in the presence of the Pachamamas at the recent Amazon synod.

The new (acting) president in Bolivia, on the other hand, “took office holding an enormous Book of the Gospels, announcing that ‘the Bible was back’ in the presidential office.”

The hammer and sickle and Pachamama are no longer the accoutrements of the Bolivian president. How long before [she] is given a warm welcome at the Vatican?

A long time.

Cited article is by Fr Raymond J de Souza, priest of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, and editor-in-chief of convivium.ca, here via Catholic Herald