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POPE FRANCIS HAS hit out at the “hypocrisy” surrounding his decision to allow blessings for same-sex couples and has labelled some of Israel’s actions as “terrorism” in a new memoir.
Earlier this week, Francis released his memoir Hope: The Autobiography.
It’s the first memoir by a sitting pope and was originally meant to be released after his death.
In it, he hits out at the “hypocrisy” surrounding his decision to formally allow priests to bless same-sex couples
Some priests had already been doing for many years, but in December 2023, Francis formally approved such blessings, saying God’s love and mercy should not be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive it.
“Of course, there is always some resistance, often linked to inadequate knowledge or some form of hypocrisy,” said Francis in his memoir.
He said that “receptiveness, and certainly not relativism, nor any change of doctrine, is the spirit and heart of the declaration”, though he added that it is the “people who are blessed, not the relationships”.
“Everyone in the Church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender,” said Francis.
“The first time that a group of transgender people came to the Vatican, they left in tears, moved because I had taken their hands, had kissed them… As if I had done something exceptional for them. But they are daughters of God!”
“They can receive baptism on the same conditions as other believers and can perform the responsibilities of godparents on the same conditions as others, and likewise be witnesses to a marriage. No provision of canonical law forbids it.”
He noted that over 60 countries criminalise homosexuality, and writes: “Homosexuality is not a crime, it is a human fact, and the Church and Christians cannot remain indifferent in the face of this criminal injustice, nor can they respond faint-heartedly.”
And to members of the LGBT community who have “personal experience of ‘the refusal of the Church’”, Francis said “this was the refusal of one person in the Church, because the Church is a mother gathers together all of her children”.
He added that while “sexual sins tend to cause more of an outcry from some people, they are really not the most serious”.
“They are human sins, of the flesh,” said Francis.
“The most serious, on the contrary, are the sins that have more ‘angelicity’, that dress themselves in another guise: pride, hatred, falsehood, fraud, abuse of power.”
He added: “It is strange that nobody worries about the blessing of an entrepreneur who exploits people, and this is a grave sin, or about someone who pollutes our common home, while there’s a public scandal if the pope blesses a divorced woman or a homosexual.
“Opposition to pastoral open-mindedness often uncovers these hypocrisies.”
Elsewhere, Francis describes the Hamas massacres of 7 October, 2023 as “diabolical and brutal”.
“I too lost Argentinian friends in that carnage, a double grief, people I had known for years, who lived in a kibbutz on the border with Gaza,” said Francis.
But he then writes that “added to that barbarity, there was another immense barbarity, through Israeli raids, tens of thousands of innocent deaths, mostly women and children, hundreds of thousands evacuated, homes destroyed, people on the brink of starvation”.
Pope Francis is in regular contact with the Holy Family Church in Gaza and writes that the Church complex has “become a theatre of death”.
“Others too were killed in cold blood in the parish precincts,” said Francis. “This too is terrorism.”
Meanwhile, he writes that the “only possible path” for the Middle East is the two-state solution outlined in the Oslo Accords.
“It is the wise solution of two clearly delineated borders and with a special status to Jerusalem,” said Francis.
“Otherwise, any solution built upon revenge and violence, wherever they are, can never bring peace, and will only scatter new seeds of hatred and resentment, generation after generation, in an endless chain of subjugation.”
While the title of the memoir is “Hope”, it starts on a downbeat note.
“Each day the world seems more elitist, and each day crueler, toward those who have been cast out and abandoned,” writes Francis.
“Developing countries continue to be drained of their finest natural and human resources for the benefit of a few privileged markets.”
He likens climate change and poverty to war, and warned that “people continue in many respects to regard migration as an invasion”.
“They play ping-pong with the lives of human beings, and they adopt an attitude that is not only profoundly inhuman but is harmful to themselves.”
Recounting a visit to the Aegen sea where many migrants have died while, Francis writes: “We can no longer allow that flow of containers, of humanity driven back, fraternity denied, to continue to represent us, to represent the disgrace of the European Union.
“We can no longer allow the Mediterranean, which for thousands of years has united different populations and distant lands, to be transformed into a cold cemetery of unmarked graves.”
He also worries about the impacts of social media and the impacts it can have on democracy.
“Democracy doesn’t seem to enjoy excellent health,” writes Francis.
He adds that an “information system based on social networks in the hands of extremely powerful oligarchs can only represent a further danger that we must keep an eye on”.
Francis also hits out at the “concentration and exaggerated monetisation” of the social media and how it has become “vulnerable to disinformation and the targeted distortion of facts”.
Meanwhile, Francis spoke about deepfakes, which he describes as the “creation and circulation of images and voices that seem perfectly real but are false”.
An AI-generated image of Francis went viral several years ago, showing him in a white puffer coat.
“I myself have ended up as the object of one,” said Francis, referring to images such as the one above.
He also describes himself in the memoir as a “sinner” and adds that he is surprised when people themselves express surprise at this pronouncement.
“This is what I said when they asked me if I agreed to be elected as pope: ‘I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in a spirit of penance I accept’.
“I still commit errors and sins, and I make confession every 15 or 20 days.”
Moments after his election and prior to his first appearance as pope, Francis said he was “offered a beautiful golden cross” but he replied: “I have this nickel silver one from my episcopal ordination, I’ve been carrying it for twenty years.”
And as for the red papal shoes often worn by his predecessor Benedict XVI, Francis too was offered these but responded: “The red shoes? No, I have orthopaedic shoes. I’m rather flat-footed.”
In the memoir, Francis also speaks about his health and looks ahead to his passing.
In July 2021, Francis underwent intestinal surgery where he had half of his colon removed due to a condition known as “stenotic diverticulitis”.
A second surgery was required in 2023.
In his memoir, Francis remarked that “each time a pope takes ill, the winds of a conclave always feel as if they are blowing”.
While Francis said the “reality is that even during the days of surgery I never thought of resigning”, he acknowledged that resigning is “always a possibility” and that should he resign, he would “remain in Rome, as emeritus bishop”.
He further writes in his memoir that while he is “well” now, “the reality is, quite simply, that I am old”.
“Indeed, it was the pain in my knee joint that I found to be the heaviest physical humiliation,” said Francis.
“It was embarrassing at first to have to use a wheelchair, but old age never arrives by itself, and it must be accepted for what it is.”
He revealed that he does physiotherapy twice a week as a result, as well as doing “as many steps as I can”.
Francis writes in his memoir that he “had the feeling” his papacy would be “brief, no more than three or four years”.
“I never imagined that I would have made all those journeys to more than sixty countries,” he wrote.
He also reveals that he will not be buried in St Peter’s Basilica, writing: “The Vatican is the home of my last service, not my eternal home.”
He also described the funeral service planned for him as “excessive” and has “arranged with the master of ceremonies to lighten it”.
Meanwhile, Francis said that “going out for a pizza is one of the small things” he misses most since becoming pope.
He also missing being able walk freely in public.
“The streets tell me so much, I learn a lot from them,” writes Francis.
“A pizza eaten on an outside table, has quite a different flavour from the one that’s delivered to you.”
Elsewhere, Francis writes about the need for priests to have humour and to refrain from being “like old bachelors”.
“Humour is genuine wisdom,” writes Francis.
“It means relating with others, since it is easy to laugh together and almost impossible to do it alone.”
He bemoaned the fact that priests “sometimes come across bitter” and as “sad priests who are more authoritarian than authoritative, more like ‘old bachelors’ than wedded to the Church, more supercilious than joyful, and this is certainly not good”.
And like he has done on many other occasions, Francis used his memoir to criticise those who gossip.
“Since I was a child, I have always tried to avoid those who gossip, those who speak ill of others,” said Francis.
“I have always regarded this as a grave sickness. Gossip, mudslinging, is by no means an innocent vice: It is instead a plague that carries discord and suffering.”
Meanwhile, Francis encouraged the faithful to leave room for doubt.
“It is no good a person saying with total certainty that they have met God,” writes Francis.
“If someone has answers to all the questions, this is proof that God is not with them.
“It means that they are a false prophet, someone who exploits religion, who uses it for themselves.
“We need to be humble, to leave space for the Lord, not for our false securities.”
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I would expect hydropower to return every litre it uses. It’s just a diversion of the water flow none of it is consumed. It should not appear in this at all.
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: That’s probably the case with all users, water always returns to the ecosystem.
@Donal Balfe: Except hydropower returns water as it finds it.
The others contaminate the water.
@Donal Balfe: Some of it gets bound up chemically into products. The rest gets polluted by all other users. Hydropower just pumps it around.
Why is the dept of agriculture, which is funded entirely by us have the right to redact information for ANY reason.
@bruce banner: And why would they want to?
That is concerning.
@bruce banner: GDPR reasons. The Department of Agriculture, other government agencies, and private companies, collect a lot of sensitive personal data about us.
GDPR rules state they must ensure the info they collect and retain about us is accurate, is only retained as long as it’s needed, is only used for it’s original stated purpose. They must also delete personal data when it’s no longer needed, and above all, they must never to publish our personal data.
For example, if the CSO released it’s unredacted Census data, you could find out all sorts of private info about your neighbors, from their educational attainment to health. So the CSO aggregates Census data to ~20 households or more, preventing you finding individual information for your neighbors.
This is the same with the Department of Agriculture avd farmer’s data. Strict privacy laws and EU wide GDPR rules means they cannot publish individual information, unless it is required by law e.g. The Industrial Missions Directive means you can go to the EPA’s website and see what pollution lincesed companies, not people, are likely to produce and what they are allowed to release.
@David Jordan: individuals arent using that much water though. I would suspect they are hiding companies that farm on industrial scales. Data protection was high jacked by corps as a means to keep their business private from citizens in precisely these types of situations.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I wouldn’t be concerned
@David Jordan: this explanation you give doesn’t make much sense to be honest. They can release the information as a sector or large grouping, not as individuals when it comes to colating the data for this exercise. GDPR doesn’t need to come into it. It’s made a nonsense of the whole study as it isn’t fit for purpose if farming isn’t accurately recorded in it. I’ve worked in GDPR so I don’t need a lesson in it in response to this, only know that there was a way to report the findings without entering into a GDPR issue.
These Sunday morning articles sometimes really are a waste of time. I’ll comment on the Cork hydropower one only. Water comes from the source of the river Lee. Flows through the ESB hydroelectric dam, then continues straight back down the river Lee out through the harbour into the Atlantic ocean. Why in the name of god is that even been measured in terms of water consumption/diversion when neither is occurring?
@Mark Murphy: And with Turlough hill, the water flows down the mountain during the day and it’s pumped back up the mountain at night. It’s not used up or polluted. Water still flows down the river.
“IDF recovers bodies of 6 hostages murdered by Hamas”
There fixed your headline for you.
Regarding the above story …
@frank dowling: Far more likely killed by the wanton rampant bombing of the Palestinian by the israeli.
Even if not, all the death and destruction in that region is caused by the israeli who have been attacking the Palestinian to drive them off their land to take it for themselves. That is how this “israel” came into existence in the first place.
None of this would be happening if not for israeli crimes against humanity.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: as-salamu alaykum islamic shill
@jak: Gaza population in 1960 = 265000
Gaza population in 2023 = 2.1m
Some annihilation ..
@frank dowling: “Were it not for the delays, sabotage, and excuses those whose deaths we learned about this morning would likely still be alive.” (Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
There.. contextualised your comment for you.
@jak: what a load of mindless krap Hamas control your thoughts ?
Israel is the rightful home of the Jews and they would be happy to live in peace with the Arabs, but the terrorists are against it.
Hamas are the problem, remove them and allow the innocent Palestinians live a normal life .
@frank dowling: I watched a programme the other evening on Saudi Crown Prince and it seems that he was trying to regularise relations with Isreal. Hamas couldn’t have that and was one of the main reasons behind the Oct 7 attacks. As you say remove Hamas and there can be some hope for Gaza.
@frank dowling: israel is NOT the rightful home of the Jews.
There was never a land called Isreal in what is Palestine.
There *was* a land called Judah, from which Jews came to be called. There was another land called Israel, though more commonly Samaria or The Northern Kingdom, further to the north in modern day Lebanon. The people of Judah despised the Samaritans, possibly because they had been conquered and ruled by them for a time.
Either way, people who are descendant from those who left a region have no right to return.
Palestine is the rightful home of the Palestinian, the descendants of those who have lived there for millennia, the descendants of those who REMAINED in the region.
But most of whom had the gall to change their religion, some to Christianity – which is how that cult spread to become worldwide – and most to Islam when it came on the scene.
Those that call themselves israeli merely CLAIM to be descendant from those who LEFT the region long ago.
And just as those who claim to be descendant from those who left our shores long ago have no claim to return here, to establish terrorist groups, to attack our people to steal our land, to attack our government to steal our homeland, then neither do those that call themselves israeli
Palestine had Jew, Christian and Muslim until the racist colonist arrived to take it for themselves.
Those racists allow me, as a Jew, the “right to return” to this state they created even though I might have only a single Jewish grandparent, but deny any right for the true people of that land to return to the land their forebears have been in since time immemorial.
Those who support what the israeli do to the Palestinian would not support it if done to any other.
So it can only be racism.
If you have another reason – one than stands to logic and reason, one based on fact – then please tell us.
@The next small thing: Saudi Arabia? The Saudi Arabia of Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS or more affectionately as “Bone Saw”? The Saudi Arabia that oppresses its own people, and perpetrates appalling atrocities on its neighbouring people, the Yemeni?
Yea, israel and Saudi would be great bed-fellows.
Of course, the actions of the Palestinians would have had nothing to do with the continuous atrocities and crimes against humanity perpetrated upon them by those who call themselves israeli.
@offside again: Conveniently ignoring the numbers forced into that concentration camp from other parts of Palestine over the decades.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: sure it happened between the Saudis and Yemen, Syria and itself, the former yugoslavia, Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan and the taliban, Pakistan and India, Russia and Ukraine, and various part of Africa.
@offside again: You israeli shills cannot handle how easy it is to destroy your propaganda.
Accept it: israel has no right to exist, much less to commit any of its atrocities, its crimes against humanity.
And to do so on the people who are descendant from those they too claim to be makes it all the more disgusting.
@P. V. Aglue: I do not know what you intend by that word salad.
Probably to try to deflect, or confuse.
In any case, nothing changes that those who claim to be descendant from people who left our shores long ago do not have any right to return here. Any right to wage terrorism on us to create their own state on our homeland.
And neither does any other.
Neither do those who chose to call themselves israeli.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: yawn
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: AHH the irony ,the only democratic government in the whole region, Palestine is controlled by hamas terror against its own people.
That is why no one will Arab govt will put it’s full force behind hamas because they do not want them to grow they took control in Palestine by murdering their opponents.
@sean weir: So because you claim it to be a “the only democratic government in the whole region”, then its atrocities, its crimes against humanity, are to be ignored?
Do you not see how this claim makes it far worse?
That the actions of such a rogue state reflects on all of us?
And how the rest of the world see our “modern democratic states” and associates these atrocities with us too?
While the Palestinian is the victim of this “greatness”?
Why do you try to hide israeli atrocities behind this veil of democracy?
Anyway, that claim about israel being the only democracy in the region that they use to somehow justify their atrocities is yet just another lie. Turkey, which used to rule that entire region until relatively recently, is a democracy.
As it the country just to the north.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: no, killed by Hamas.
None of this would be happening if Hamas wasn’t turning billions of aid money into rockets and smuggling tunnels.
@John Mulligan: he would blame Israel for the Oasis ticket prices that lad.
@John Mulligan: Do explain how those who merely claim to be descendant from people who left a region long ago have any right to return to it, to establish terrorist groups – like Haganah, the Stern Gang and Irgun – attack the people of that region to drive them off their land to take it for themselves, attack their government to steal their homeland for themselves.
And do explain how the victims of all these atrocities are not entitled to fight back in any way they can.
And then explain how all the death and destruction, all the suffering, is not the consequence of the colonial invader.
All the death and destruction, all the suffering in the region is caused by and the responsibility of those that chose to call themselves israeli.
You can the other israeli propaganda shills have never been able to refute a single point i have made.
For it is the simple truth.
All you have is your propaganda lies.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: there is only one language spoken there today which was spoken 3000 years ago .. not Palestinian, not Arabic.. Hebrew .. the language of the Jews . It’s their land .. they were there before the Arabs and they are the one constant .. not the assyrians , not the Samaratans, not the Babylonians or anyone else .. give over this stuff about Judea (Israel) not being home of the Jews.. of course it is .. your antisemitism prevents you from seeing the truth ..
@frank dowling: They were not there before the Arabs, read your Bible if you’re lost on this point. The people of Israel have no more right to Palestine than American Irish have right to land their ancestors left behind in Ireland.
If you leave your home vacant and somebody squats in it they typically have ownership rights within 15-20 years. Now if the ancestors of those who left that land return in 500 years they still have rights to it, they don’t? Get real!
Fill up bottles with tap water and sell it at the farmers market as pure mineral water. A great scam a la del boy.
Falsely make hydropower look like a significant water extractor in order to make industrials look not that bad. How about we see a breakdown of industrials and see what portion is data centers and animal agriculture food production, which is broken down into export versus home consumption. It looks like there are some funky presentation tactics going on with this data to mask some industry or industries.
@Lewis Armstrong: Yea.
Hydo does not extract water at all.
Not in any common sense understanding at any rate.
@Lewis Armstrong: hydro effects the migrating fish and the land up stream.
Data centers consume vast quantities of electricity and water.
The cover up on Data Centres continues, nobody in Ireland investigating the scandal, nobody will take notice till we start getting blackouts to keep the Data Centres on. If we had any investigative journalism in Ireland, they would be looking at the energy use & water usage by Data Centers, both of which are off the Richter scale.
Really good article, great depth.
have your say