Back in 2004 when US Marines were fighting young Shiite militiamen in Najaf (quite against Sistani’s will), I tried to signal to the Washington Establishment that it was dangerous to fight in the holy city, with the danger that the US might damage the shrine of Ali. Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, who was assassinated according to Muslim tradition in 661 AD. Shiites see him as the rightful vicar of the Prophet, sort of a Muslim St. Peter. And so the shrine of Ali is like the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome. When I saw a US general on CNN in spring of 2004 say this very thing, I was a little relieved that I had gotten through to them.

So it is amazing to see the Pope, the successor to St. Peter, meeting in Najaf with one of the foremost interpreters of Ali.

The office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said after the meeting that he had spoken about the injustice, oppression, poverty, religious and intellectual persecution, denial of basic human rights, and absence of social justice that afflict many in the Middle East.

The communique continued, “Sayyid Sistani [also] spoke about the wars, economic blockades and displacement that many of the peoples of the region are experiencing,” saying that “His Excellency pointed to the role that religious leaders must play in stopping these tragedies.”

Sistani stressed the responsibility of religious and spiritual leaders to urge the Great Powers to exercise reason and wisdom and to reject the language of war. He urged a concerted effort to strengthen the values of harmony, peaceful coexistence and human solidarity.

He said he hoped Iraq would soon overcome its current crises, and stressed the glorious history of the country. He said Christians should be able to live in peace there like all other Iraqis, enjoying all their rights under the constitution.

Sistani referred to his own role in mobilizing Shiite volunteers against the vicious ISIL terrorist group in 2014, at a time when the Iraqi Army had collapsed. He instructed them to protect religious minorities from the murderous ISIL guerrillas, who targeted Christians, Izadis and others.

Sistani differs from his colleagues in Iran in his belief in parliamentary democracy and basic human rights. In fact, in the Bush era he critiqued the US for not honoring the will of the Iraqi people. Religious freedom in Iran is much more constrained than in Iraq from the point of view of law, at least.

One Iranian newspaper in recent days caused a stir by criticizing Sistani for asking for UN observers of any forthcoming Iraqi elections. Sistani’s belief in international law and institutions does not sit well with some hyper-nationalist and frankly narrow-minded Iranians.

Pope Francis said in turn that he wanted formally to thank Ayatollah Sistani for the role he played in calling for the protection of the Iraqi Christian community during the time of its persecution (i.e. at the hands of ISIL).

Iranians on social media particularly appreciated that Sistani had brought up “economic blockades” as an issue, since the United States has strangled Iranian finances and commerce. It occurs to me that Sistani may have brought this issue up in particular with the Pope in hopes that he in turn would speak to US president Joe Biden, a Roman Catholic, about the US blockade on Iranian civilians.

Pope Francis went on later that morning to Ur, the alleged birthplace of Abraham, for an inter-religious ceremony. A Muslim and a Christian youth spoke, along with a woman from the Mandaean religion of southern Iraq who are gnostics, and then a Shiite Muslim professor.

In his own remarks, Pope Francis said, “When terrorism invaded the north of this beloved country, it wantonly destroyed part of its magnificent religious heritage, including the churches, monasteries and places of worship of various communities.”

“Yet, even at that dark time, some stars kept shining. I think of the young Muslim volunteers of Mosul, who helped to repair churches and monasteries, building fraternal friendships on the rubble of hatred, and those Christians and Muslims who today are restoring mosques and churches together.”

The Pope added, “There will be no peace unless peoples extend a hand to other peoples. There will be no peace as long as we see others as them and not us. There will be no peace as long as our alliances are against others, for alliances of some against others only increase divisions.”

“Peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity. Let us ask for this in praying for the whole Middle East. Here I think especially of neighboring war-torn Syria.”

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Bonus Video:

Pope Francis meets with Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani | DW News

Pope Francis said that he is going to Iraq as a penitential pilgrim, asking God’s forgiveness for the years of war and violence that have afflicted Iraq, and as a pilgrim of peace.

Pope John Paul II had vigorously opposed Bush’s Iraq War.

The Pope was invited to the country by President Barham Salih, who hoped the pontiff’s visit would have a calming effect.

Iraq is now thought to have about 300,000 Christians, some 1 percent of the population. Before the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003 the number was said to have been 800,000 (and then the Iraqi population was smaller). The US invasion and occupation created a power vacuum in the country that saw the rise of extremist groups. Because Americans were the enemy and Occupier, and are mostly Christian, extremists began targeting Iraqi Christians (whose families had been there for a millennium and a half and who had nothing to do with the United States). Many have fled to Beirut or Detroit. Most remaining Iraqi Christians are Roman Catholics who recognize the Pope but have retained their own Syriac liturgy.

The Pope said that he was sure that the correct teachings of the religions call for holding to the values of peace, brotherhood and humanity. He said on his arrival in Baghdad, “We must concentrate on what unites us rather than what leads to our division.” He expressed concern about the pandemic, but said it was an opportunity to think about the pattern of our lives and existence. He urged that the vaccine be distributed in a fair and equitable manner.

He urged Muslims to embrace the Christians in their midst. (Muslims are supposed to do this anyway, since they recognized Christians and Jews as fellow monotheists and “people of the Book” with a divine scripture).

Addressing the violence that has plagued the region in recent decades, Pope Francis denounced the fundamentalism that rejects coexistence as having brought death, destruction, and ruins visible to the eye.

He referred to the travails of the Izadi (Yazidi) Kurds, who were attacked by the ISIL terrorist group, describing what happened to them as headlong barbarism and entire lack of humanity. He deplored the Izadis’ potential loss of identity and described cultural and religious diversity as priceless and valuable, not something anyone should strive to end.

He urged rebuilding and striving for a more just world for coming generations. He said respect for rights and safeguarding all the religious communities in the world was necessary to achieve peace and harmony. He added, “enough of violence and extremism.” He said God calls us to love, not to displacement and terrorism.

He especially thanked those charitable organizations who are helping to rebuild Iraq and to help the millions of displaced.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi tweeted, “With all love and peace both the Iraqi people and government welcome His Holiness Pope Francis, to emphasize the depth of the human bonds that are and have been historically centered on the lands of Mesopotamia, where religions and intellectual currents and common human values meet. Greetings to His Holiness in the land of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and the prophets and saints.”

The biblical figure Abraham is said in the Bible to be from Ur in what is now Iraq, and the Pope will visit his supposed birthplace. In the Bible, as well, Jonah was said to have preached in Ninevah in what is now northern Iraq, and the country is the site of one of the earliest Christian communities, which at one time comprised a good deal of the population, under the Sasanian Iranian empire and then under the Muslim caliphates.

President Barham Salih, of Kurdish heritage, hosted the pope in the presidential palace in the high-security Green Zone.

Even the Shiite militias welcomed the pope, and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, usually anti-Western, tweeted his regards.

Pope Francis also visited the priests, nuns and other church officials of the Our Lady of Salvation church in the upper middle class Karrada district. He was presented with the dossiers on the 48 Christians who were murdered there by the radical ISIL terrorist group, as well as information about other ISIS atrocities.

The pope will visit five provinces or governorates, including Ninewah, as well as the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where he will meet Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whom many Shiites around the world consider their leader, except in Iran where there are many ayatollahs who compete for the loyalty of the laity. The pope arrived in Najaf on Saturday morning.

Baghdad was put under curfew for the visit. I attended a conference held by the Iraqi ministry of culture in 2013 in Baghdad, and our kind Iraqi hosts took us on excursions in the city, including to Karrada. They packed us in white vans and surrounded us with army vehicles that made the commuters get out of the way on the highway so as to forestall any attempt by terrorists to block the street and attack us. If the security was so good for a few dozen professors, I’m sure it is air tight for Pope Francis.

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Bonus Video:

ABC: “Pope Francis visits Iraq”

Pope Francis will arrive in Iraq on Friday in a first-ever papal visit to the country that is expected to raise awareness about the challenges facing Iraqi Christians – a majority of whom are Catholic.

In the past two decades, the Christian population in Iraq has fallen by over 80%. The 1987 Iraqi census reported that there were 1.4 million Christians in Iraq, and today it is estimated that the Christian population is less than 250,000. Spurred by political instability and war, many Christians have immigrated to other regions, including North America, Western Europe and Australia.

My recent book, “Alien Citizens: The State and Religious Minorities in Turkey and France,” examines how international factors influence the status of religious minorities. I argue that in Iraq’s case, it was a series of international interventions that eventually led to the dwindling of the Christian minority.

Who are Iraq’s Christians?

Most Iraqi Christians are ethnically Assyrian, and they belong to the historic Church of the East, one of the three major branches of Eastern Christianity. The language of worship is a dialect of Aramaic, the language that Jesus is said to have spoken.

The largest of these Assyrian communities belongs to the Chaldean Catholic Church, making up more than two-thirds of all Christians living in Iraq.

The Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East are other smaller Assyrian communities that constitute about 5% of Iraqi Christians.

Syriacs, who constitute somewhere between 10% to 15% of Iraqi Christians, are organized around the Syriac Catholic Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church, which are headquartered in Lebanon and Syria respectively.

Armenians and Arab Christians, along with other small groups, constitute the rest of the Christians living in Iraq.

Christians flee Iraq after war

The events that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq led to a large-scale persecution of the Christian population.

While Saddam Hussein repressed ethnic and religious groups such as Kurds and Shiites, Christians fared relatively better under his rule. As religion scholar Kristian Girling wrote, in return for their acquiescence to Saddam’s authoritarianism, Christians were given protections and gained prominence in business and cultural life.

Tariq Aziz, who was the deputy prime minister in Saddam’s Cabinet between 1979 and 2003, was affiliated with the Chaldean Catholic Church.

The ousting of Saddam by U.S. troops led to a power vacuum in which sectarianism and instability helped create the conditions for the rise of extremist groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq from 2004.

Violence against Christians in the form of killings, attacks and kidnappings soared.

As a result, many Christians fled Iraq. According to data compiled from U.S. International Religious Freedom reports, by 2013, a decade after the invasion, more than half the Christian population had left the country.

The destruction by Islamic State group

The plight of Iraq’s Christians became more precarious as the Islamic State group took hold of swaths of the country.

In 2014, IS controlled the territories around Mosul in Northern Iraq and expelled Christians from Nineveh Plains. According to some estimates, more than 100,000 Christians fled from Nineveh Plains to the autonomous Kurdish regions.

Many never returned after the defeat of IS in 2017. Those who did had to face the Shiite militant groups who helped the Iraqi government defeat IS and controlled some Christian territories.

Until the Iraqi government had tamed these militias and had political control over them, Christians had skirmishes with them over properties and lands. According to media reports, many more Christians left Iraq in this period.

In short, the U.S. invasion of Iraq started a cycle of violence that put Christianity under threat. As foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer wrote in a piece for The Boston Globe: “By overthrowing Hussein, we hastened the end of Christianity in a land to which Saint John is said to have brought it soon after the Crucifixion.”

[Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.]

Is there hope?

Between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration provided over US$300 million in aid to support the rebuilding of the Christian cities and villages of Nineveh Plains destroyed by IS in Northern Iraq.

However, a long-lasting solution to improving Christians’ status is maintaining the rule of law in Iraq. The Iraqi constitution, drafted in 2005, declares Islam as the country’s official religion. Singling out one religion at the expense of others can put religious minorities at risk unless clear protections are provided. Iraq needs a legal framework for equal citizenship to create a safe environment for religious minorities.

The Iraqi government invited Pope Francis to visit. The president of Iraq, Barham Salih, described the visit as “a message of peace to Iraqis of all religions.” Media reports have quoted a Vatican source as saying the pope aims “to comfort Christians who, amid wars and conflicts, have been forced to flee from Iraq.”

One cannot know if the pope’s visit will help Iraqi Christians heal from many years of suffering, but it will definitely bring public attention to their situation.

Ramazan Kılınç, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska Omaha

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

America – The Jesuit Review: “Why is Pope Francis visiting Iraq? | Behind the Story”

Abu Dhabi (AF) – Pope Francis and a top Muslim cleric Monday issued a joint call for freedom of belief during the first visit by the head of the Catholic church to the birthplace of Islam — the Arabian Peninsula.

Francis, who has made outreach to Muslim communities a cornerstone of his papacy, is on an historic three-day visit to the United Arab Emirates.

He is due to hold an open-air mass on Tuesday for 135,000 of the Muslim country’s million Catholic residents, set to be the largest ever public gathering in the Gulf state.

On Monday, the pope held talks in Abu Dhabi with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb — imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s prestigious seat of learning.

The two religious leaders signed a document on “human fraternity for world peace and living together”, described by the Vatican as an “important step forward in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims”.

They called for “freedom of belief”, the “promotion of a culture of tolerance”, the “protection of places of worship” and “full citizenship” rights for minorities.

It said “freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action” and that “pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God”.

“The fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept,” it said.

Francis also delivered an address at an interfaith meeting attended by Sheikh Ahmed and UAE leaders, and pushed for an end to all wars in the Middle East, including in Yemen.

The United Arab Emirates and neighbouring Saudi Arabia are key allies of the Yemeni government, which is locked in a war against Iran-linked rebels that has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine.

– ‘Reject war’ –

The pope said all religious leaders had a “duty to reject every nuance of approval from the word war”.

“I am thinking in particular of Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya,” he said.

Yemen is the scene of what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, triggered by the intervention of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies in a war between the government and Huthi rebels.

More than 10 million Yemenis now risk imminent starvation.

The UAE, which prides itself on its religious diversity in the Gulf, is also a member of the US-led coalition battling the Islamic State group in both Syria and Iraq.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, one of the most powerful rulers in the seven emirates, on Monday gifted the pope a deed for the plot of land on which the first church in the UAE was built.

The pope’s visit to the Arabian Peninsula (AFP Photo/Jean Michel CORNU).”

Pope Francis in turn gave him a framed medallion of the meeting between St. Francis Assisi — the pope’s namesake — and the Sultan of Egypt Malek al-Kamel, in 1219.

While the pope did not openly discuss politics, he called for “the full recognition” of rights for people across the Middle East, a potential reference to communities including Shiites in Saudi Arabia, refugees and migrants, stateless peoples and other minorities.

“I look forward to societies where people of different beliefs have the same right of citizenship and where only in the case of violence in any of its forms is that right removed,” he said.

– ‘Year of tolerance’ –

The Emirates has dubbed 2019 its “year of tolerance” but rights groups have criticised it for its role in Yemen, where an estimated 10,000 people have been killed since the Saudi-led alliance the government’s fight against the Huthis in 2015.

Aircraft fly over the presidential palace in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi during a reception for Pope Francis on February 4, 2019 (AFP Photo/Giuseppe CACACE).”

Muslims make up nearly four fifths of the UAE’s population, but the country is also home to nearly a million Catholics, according to the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia.

Migrants from Asian countries make up about 65 percent of the population.

The UAE has pushed itself as an open society in a conservative region. The country is home to eight Catholic churches, Hindu temples and a place of prayer that serves as a synagogue.

Bahrain and Qatar are home to one Catholic church each while Oman, Kuwait and Yemen each have four while Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia bans all non-Muslim places of worship.

© Agence France-Presse

Featured Photo: Pope Francis (L) and the Grand Imam of Cairo-based Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb (2nd-R) sign documents during the Human Fraternity Meeting at the Founders Memorial in Abu Dhabi on February 4, 2019 (AFP Photo/Vincenzo PINTO ). “It is… crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority,” read the document.

The Pontiff quoted his Encyclical, Laudato Si, to representatives of ExxonMobil, Total, BP and many others, saying, “There is no time to lose: We received the earth as a garden-home from the Creator; let us not pass it on to future generations as a wilderness”.

Unlike President Trump, the Vatican has a whole bevy of science advisers. What a comedown for Americans proud of our First Amendment and republican spirit, that the Vatican is now demonstrably more progressive than is the United State of America.

The Pope said,

“Air quality, sea levels, adequate fresh water reserves, climate control and the balance of delicate ecosystems – all are necessarily affected by the ways that human beings satisfy their “thirst” for energy, often, sad to say, with grave disparities.”

Pope Francis admitted that the some one billion persons in the world lacking electricity need to be supplied with reliable power, but he insisted that this vast expansion of energy generation take place via green energy sources.

The pope lamented that carbon dioxide emissions remain very high despite the signing of the Paris Accords in December, 2015.

Pope Francis said, “Civilization requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilization!”

Featured Photo: Long Thiên, Flickr.

—–

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

CBS: “Pope, businesses fight climate change one year after U.S. pulled out of Paris Accord”

Pope Francis, in his Easter address on Sunday, called for peace in the Holy Land two days after 15 Palestinians were killed on the Israeli-Gaza border, saying the conflict there “does not spare the defenceless”, Reuters reports.

The pope made his appeal in his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to tens of thousands of people in the flower-bedecked square below where he earlier celebrated a Mass.

He also appealed for an end to the “carnage” in Syria, calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed to enter, and for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Francis appeared to refer directly to the Gaza violence last Friday, calling for “reconciliation for the Holy Land, also experiencing in these days the wounds of ongoing conflict that do not spare the defenceless.”

Israel’s defence minister has rejected calls for an inquiry into the killings by the military during a Palestinian demonstration that turned violent at the Gaza-Israel border.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, and other leaders have called for an independent investigation into the bloodshed.

The Pope also begged for peace for “the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war.”

“This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course … ” he said.

He spoke a day after the Syrian army command said it had regained most of the towns and villages in eastern Ghouta. Tens of thousands of people have now evacuated once-bustling towns in the suburbs east of the capital, which had nearly 2 million people before the start of the conflict and were major commercial and industrial hubs.

Francis called for international assistance for Venezuela, so that more people would not have to abandon their homeland because of the economic and political crisis.

He hoped the “fruits of dialogue” would advance peace and harmony on the Korean peninsula, where the two sides are set to hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27, after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearisation.

Francis, celebrating his sixth Easter as Roman Catholic leader since his election in 2013, urged his listeners to work for an end to the “so many acts of injustice” in the world.

He prayed the power of Jesus’ message “bears fruits of hope and dignity where there are deprivation and exclusion, hunger and unemployment, where there are migrants and refugees – so often rejected by today’s culture of waste – and victims of the drug trade, human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery”.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

——

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Wochit News: “Pope Says ‘Defenseless’ Being Killed In Gaza Violence”

Both Erdogan and Pope Francis are opposed to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which many US allies say could doom Middle East peace efforts.

Tayyip Erdogan made the first visit by a Turkish president to the Vatican in 59 years on Monday, discussing the status of Jerusalem with Pope Francis, as scuffles broke out between police and demonstrators nearby.

Police, who put much of the centre of the city under lockdown for the visit, said two people were detained after demonstrators tried to break through cordons to get closer to the Vatican from an authorised protest several blocks away.

Returning a visit made by the pope to Turkey in 2014, Erdogan spoke privately with Francis for about 50 minutes in the pontiff’s frescoed study in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, which he uses mostly for ceremonial purposes.

A Vatican statement said the talks included “the status of Jerusalem, highlighting the need to promote peace and stability in the region (Middle East) through dialogue and negotiation, with respect for human rights and international law.”

Both Erdogan and Pope Francis are opposed to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which many US allies say could doom Middle East peace efforts.

At the end of the private part of the meeting, the pope gave Erdogan a bronze medallion showing an angel embracing the northern and southern hemispheres while overcoming the opposition of a dragon.

“This is the angel of peace who strangles the demon of war,” the pope told Erdogan as he gave him the medallion, made by the Italian artist Guido Verol. “(It is) a symbol of a world based on peace an justice.”

The public part of the meeting, with reporters and Erdogan’s entourage, was cordial, although both men seemed stiff at the start while seated at the pope’s desk before journalists were ushered out.

Erdogan’s motorcade entered a virtually deserted St. Peter’s Square after the streets that are usually bustling with tourists were closed due to security fears.

An authorised demonstration of about 150 people including Kurds and their supporters outside nearby Castel Sant’Angelo, a fortress on the banks of the River Tiber, turned violent when police in riot gear pushed back shouting and shoving protesters who tried to break through their lines. At least one demonstrator was injured, a witness said.

Some 3,500 police and security forces were on duty in Rome and authorities declared a no-go area for unauthorised demonstrations that included the Vatican, Erdogan’s hotel and Italian palaces where he is meeting the president and prime minister.

Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, said in a tweet that it was “shameful” that the government was receiving Erdogan, calling him “the head of a bloody, freedom-killing Islamic regime”.

Erdogan and the pope spoke by phone in December after Trump made his announcement on Jerusalem and agreed that any change to the city’s status quo should be avoided.

The Vatican backs a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with both sides agreeing on the status of Jerusalem – home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions – as part of the peace process.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state, whereas Israel has declared the whole city to be its “united and eternal” capital.

Among Erdogan’s delegation was the Mehmet Pacaci, Turkey’s ambassador to the Vatican. Erdogan recalled Pacaci to Turkey in 2015 when Francis became the first pope to publicly call the 1915 killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians “genocide” – something Turkey has always denied.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

—–

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Erdogan Vatican Visit: Pope, Erdogan agree to protect Jerusalem status”

Humans are turning the planet into a ‘polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation, and filth,’ says Pope Francis

“The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis on Thursday put forth an urgent call for people to actively work to save the environment, proposing that the Catholic Church add such a duty to the list of “seven mercies,” which includes feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, which Catholics are required to perform.

“We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behaviour.”

—Pope Francis”Francis described man’s destruction of the environment as a sin,” the Guardian reported.

“The modern world has new forms of poverty, Francis said, and thus requires new forms of mercy to address them,” the Washington Post noted.

In his speech to mark the church’s World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which the pope created last year, Francis accused humans of turning the Earth into a “polluted wasteland full of debris, desolation, and filth.”

Remarking on the planet’s rapid warming, Francis observed that “[c]limate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact.”

“We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behaviour,” he said. “Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence.”

“We have no such right,” Francis said.

Francis’ speech built on ideas he first put forth last year in Laudato Si, his unprecedented encyclical on climate change and environmental protection.

Earlier this month, Francis also excoriated capitalism for leading to endless war.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Via Commondreams.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Wochit News: “Pope Wants To Add Protecting The Enviroment To Catholic Duties”

AFP reported from the papal airplane on Pope Francis’s remarks about Islam in the wake of the brutal murder of an elderly priest by two teenagers of North African heritage in Normandy last Tuesday. Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) claimed responsibility.

The pope said,

“It’s not true and it’s not correct (to say) Islam is terrorism. . . I don’t think it is right to equate Islam with violence”.

Pope Francis continued, “In almost every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. We have them too . . . If I have to talk about Islamic violence I have to talk about Christian violence. Every day in the newspapers I see violence in Italy, someone kills his girlfriend, another kills his mother-in-law, and these are baptised Catholics.”

The pope said four things here that will be unwelcome to the right wing politicians in Europe and North America.

1. He said that Islam is not intrinsically a driver of terrorism. This is obviously true, since most Muslims in most times and places have been perfectly peaceful people.

2. He made a distinction between the 1.5 billion adherents of Islam in the world and the tiny fringe that commits acts of terrorism.

3. He pointed out that the same small fringe of violent people exists in the ranks of Roman Catholics, as well.

4. He put the murder of the priest in Normandy on the same plane as criminal murders committed by Catholics in Italy. That is, he did not privilege “terrorism” as an metaphysically distinct category of violence, but put it under the sign of criminality.

No more succinct and sensible statement of the case could possibly be made, and you marvel at the combination of intellect and deep ethical insight of this man.

One could go further and mention that the precepts of Islam actively forbid murder and terrorism. The Qur’an cites Jewish traditions that to murder one person is like committing genocide against all humankind. A single murder, the Qur’an maintains, is equivalent to an extinction-level event. Killing innocent civilians, the very definition of terrorism, is first and foremost murder.

That Christians commit terrorism on a large scale is very clear from recent history. As many acts of terrorism are committed in Europe by far right wing European nativist groups, some with a Christian heritage, as by Muslims. Christians have managed to tag fascism as a neo-pagan or secular movement, but it was often deeply intertwined with the Church. Although the Irish Republican Army was disproportionately Marxist, it had priests and believing Catholics among its operatives. (Irish may have had good reason to be dissatisfied with British policy, but that did not give them a right to bomb Harrod’s department store and kill innocent shoppers). To support Pope Francis’s point, here are 8 Christian terrorist groups every bit as scary as anything in the Middle East.

As for seeing terrorism as a form of criminality, you can only hope that legislators and law enforcement will listen to him. In the US we have on the order of 16,000 murders a year, with only a handful committed by terrorists. In fact, distinguishing some murders from terrorism is very difficult, because many killings have some sort of political or ethno-nationalist dimension– which is the definition of terrorist violence.

By placing terrorism on a pedestal and annointing it as some sort of metaphysical category that trumps all other forms of violence, we are regrettably wasting precious resources and militarizing our police (leading to the alienation of whole communities from police who dress like military commandos.) Murder is murder, and the life of each victim is equally precious.

Meanwhile, in response to the murder of the priest in Normandy by the teen-aged Daesh, some 2,000 French Muslims attended Catholic mass in solidarity on Sunday.

In today’s charged Islamophobic atmosphere, unfortunately Muslims are obliged to make such gestures. For their own good, they have to become more extroverted and more involved. Many Muslims in Europe and North America are first and second generation immigrants, who have a tendency to keep their heads down and their noses clean. They often come from dictatorial societies where you stay out of trouble by keeping quiet.

But in our increasingly demagogic societies in the West (Aristotle said demagoguery is the
corrupt form of democracy), you stay out of trouble by speaking out. If you are silent and timid, people will try to use you for their political purposes. Most of these hatemongers are cowards, though, so if you let them have it they back off. That is why Khizr Khan’s speech was so powerful– he showed that as an immigrant he had no fear of speaking out publicly against the powerful and wealthy leader of one of our two major parties.

Muslims need to do things like attend Christian services and engage in interfaith dialogue more than they do (I know a lot of Muslims are very active in these fields, but they are a small minority). Opinion pollings shows definitively that Westerners who know a Muslim are much less likely to be Islamophobes.

And Christian leaders need to speak out more, as Pope Francis does, on behalf of Muslims. the Muslim-haters among Christians should contemplate Matthew 5:

“21 “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults[b] his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.”

A lot of Christian leaders on the Right are calling their fellow human beings, the Muslims, a lot worse than ‘fool’ So we know where they’re headed.

——

Related video:

Rome Reports: “Pope Francis, following the recent attacks: It is not a war of religions. Religions want peace”