See the beauty here is that you can speak your peace and move along, whereas if you were saying the same thing about muslims some pissed off old guy in a turban would issue a fatwah to have your balls chopped off and hang you in a public square
Its all a matter of location. If he said this about Catholics in a very traditional country where religion is highly valued, like some places in Africa. They may castrate him and feed his testicles to snakes.
It's unaccepatble on any level. It's one thing to have an opinion that you can at least try and defend but to essentially come out and call out all Catholics as pedophiles is bullshit. We have people here of all religions and beliefs and they shouldn't have to read comments like that.
Still no word... I'm still sticking with the Brazilian but I wouldn't be shocked to see the guy from Argentina.
I hope the new guy is more forward thinking. They need to start allowing female priests or half the congregations in the country will close in the next couple decades
Piers Morgan @piersmorgan Pope Francis 1 is renowned for his 2001 visit to a hospice, in which he washed and kissed the feet of 12 AIDS patients. Need to watch what he said later in english translation...He was speaking in spanish it looked like. Seems like a nice personality. He is 78 years old
Another old guy as Pope really doesn't help the Church's efforts to connect with younger members. He's already 76 which means in all probability, we'll be watching the smokestack in 2023 again. The Church might want to consider the next Pope to be no older than 60 to at least give him one entire generation (25 years) to put his stamp on the Faith.
Apparently there is a large growth in Protestantism in Brazil, which might have worked against him. In both countries the lay people are very much to the left of the Church on matters like premarital sex, same sex marriage, contraception, abortion, etc. The benefits of having a Pope from Latin America are obvious, but it will be very interesting to see if this results in real change in church dogma, especially considering his age.
Just FYI this is as European a non-European choice as can be made. Up to 60% of Argentines have some level of Italian descent.
