Pope Francis would be a whole better off if the media didn’t report these media stunts he’s pulling off in Brazil. Starting with his name associating him with Francis of Assisi to his baby-kissing (like any second rate US politician) to his living in a “humble” mansion to his parade through a Rio favela, this guy is a one-man public relations fraud, a manufactured image, a persona that doesn’t exist.
He has yet to come clean on what he knows about the Dirty War in Argentina when 10,000 to 30,000 people disappeared during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship--many of them thrown from military planes into the sea. He has yet to answer for the Catholic hierarchies collusive role with the Argentine dictatorship--especially his role when liberation theology Jesuits under this control were kidnapped & tortured by the military for working in slums. He has yet to explain his refusal to intervene when appealed to by grandparents of infants born while their “disappeared” children were in military custody & allegedly given to military families to raise as their own.
In many ways it’s appropriate that he parades through a favela where he will walk a red carpet on the only street that’s been paved to give benedictions for a new church altar. If he doesn’t look right or left he won’t see the favela has been “pacified,” (meaning occupied) by the Brazilian army & police, including tanks & repression & mass evictions & mass arrests & incarcerations (including of children) under the guise of the war on drugs. He won’t notice the lack of education & health care & he can remain as mute as he was in Argentina--& just as collusive.
Here Pope Francis masks dry at a mask manufactory in Brazil. The factory is Brazil’s oldest & has made masks of athletes, Shrek, & politicians from around the world. What could be more appropriate than another baked image!?
(Photo by Felipe Dana/AP)
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