None So Holy As He

"There is a Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country."

"And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world."

"[The] far left [got the order backward]."

U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance (new convert to Catholicism)

 

"The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."

"But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth."

Pope Francis

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Vice President JD Vance used the old Catholic theology to defend the Trump administration's immigration policy. Pope Francis made clear that's not the church's interpretation. AP

 

"This morning, at the end of the audiences, Pope Francis will be admitted to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic for some necessary diagnostic tests and to continue in a hospital setting treatment for bronchitis that is still ongoing."

Vatican statement

In hospital for an indeterminate period of time to treat his latest ailments, the Pope will not be available for the Saturday Jubilee, a Sunday Mass and other engagements. A Vatican cardinal has been tasked with  presiding in Pope Francis' place over the Mass and other events were cancelled "due to the impossibility of the Pope to participate".

 

Pope Francis has found much to be displeased over, with the new U.S. administration in the White House. Specifically one item has raised his holy ire; the issue of floods of migrants from Africa, Central America and the Middle East churning their arduously determined way on foot and by sea to the wealthy countries of the world which also happen to be Western democrats. It is this man's opinion at the Holy See that any and all who declare themselves refugees are obliged by Europe and North America to be met with open arms.

 

Europe has had its fill of economic migrants and their illegal and unwanted entries, as has the United States, neither oblivious to the reality that the tide of humanity attempting to breach their shores is virtually unstoppable, but each is doing their utmost finally to put a stop to these unwanted entries. Furthermore, the populations of all these reluctantly receiving countries are themselves fed up with the presence of people who fail to respect the social culture and laws of countries they invade.

 

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a woman inmate of the Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome on Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024, a ritual meant to emphasize his vocation of service and humility.

Vatican Media via AP

The Pope is not a well man; his age for one thing has caught up with him, at 88, and his constitution can hardly be described as robust. He has been bedeviled with ill health for many years. Governments come and go regularly, and so, in fact, do popes. A week-long bout of bronchitis has seen to Pope Francis's hospitalization where he is  undergoing diagnostic tests. He had lately been experiencing breathing problems, rendering him functionally incapable of maintaining his rigorous audiences and public events schedules.

 

As a young man he had part of one of his lungs removed. He experiences regular bouts of acute bronchitis during the winter season. He now makes regular use of a wheelchair, a walker or cane even while moving around ordinarily in his apartment. He recently fell on two occasions, doing harm to his arm and his chin. He was last admitted to Rome's Gemelli  hospital in June of 2023 for surgery to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall.

 

Three days were spent prior to that in Gemelli receiving intravenous antibiotics for a respiratory infection. He had been rushed to the hospital after spiking a  high fever and feeling a sharp pain in his chest in March 2023, diagnosed with "an acute and strong pneumonia, in the lower part of the lungs". Popes have a private suite on the 10th floor of the Gemelli Hospital. 

 

Pope Francis was also hospitalized in March 2023 to be treated for acute bronchitis. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/Reuters

 

In his 2023 hospitalization where pneumonia was diagnosed, he was placed on intravenous antibiotics and released on April 1, quipping he was "still alive. Thank God I can tell the story, because the organism, the body, responded well to the treatment", he later said. But 'the organism' cannot be expected to rally so well each time a new health crisis arrives. In the meanwhile, he performs his duties as he is inclined to do, sharply criticizing world leaders for their solutions to problems, running afoul of this pope's reading of Church doctrine.