The American Pope of the Southern Global

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Rola Khaleda, FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Author, author of “Hitler’s Pope”, “The Pontif in Winter” and “Earth to Earth”

What He was He is thinking? Liu fourteenth! A clear greeting to Liu XIII, Pope from 1878 to 1903, and is a major boy of Catholics during the first half of the twentieth century. As a Catholic student in the fifties of the last century, I learned full pieces from the famous Leo Encyclopedia, Revolutionary – From new things.

This papal message to the world insisted on the rights and dignity of workers, live wages, and even the right to strike, while condemning socialism and capitalist greed equally. The basis of Catholic education was on the “public good” to this day.

The name of Liu refers to the new Pope’s focus on the ordeal of workers all over the world. But a few of them expected that the Cardinals would choose the American Pope, born and grew up in Chicago.

Obviously, with wide priorities, they see the Church in the United States as the Great Coal Coal: a huge Catholic society in a deep crisis. While more than 40 percent of the Church in Latin America resides, the Church in the United States, by 7 percent of the entire church, is more than 50 million adults. Catholicism without the weight of believers in North America is indispensable.

However, the relatively large size of Catholic belonging by baptism does not mean that everything is fine. According to the Gallup poll, only 23 percent of Catholics attend a weekly mass. About 19 percent of Americans determine themselves as Catholics, a decrease from 24 percent in 2007. At the same time, in a survey conducted by the Catholic magazine crisis, every 100 people are currently joining the Catholic Church in the United States, 840 they leave. If it is half correct, even, the trend is catastrophic.

Catholic societies are divided. Traditionalists yearn for ancient rituals, condemnation of divorce, abortion and homosexuality.

The so -called “large tent” Catholics, the progressive wing of the American Church, advised human sympathy with the way people already live, and the direction of Pope Francis is adopting. Amidst the widespread problems of the American Catholicism, there was a decrease in donations of the church, which exacerbated the Financial Affairs of the Vatican.

In the nineteenth century, Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote influential articles, “The Rules of Approval”. He said that through a comprehensive experience of traditions, writings, rituals and ministers that people attracted to religion.

The amazing effect of the Biblical abuse scandal in America, reinforced by the media and films such as Lights It reveals that on the same distinctive, it can become “yes” great to faith “no” big. Indeed, a fateful cloud at the dawn of Leo’s papal is the claim made by three Peruvian women as a bishop that failed to investigate their reports of ill -treatment by two priests in Chicio, Peru, dating back to 2007.

However, the Cardinals believed that the Pope speaking to the American Catholics with an American tone, with the support of the papal power, which could turn the American Catholic ship into benefiting from the entire church.

Liu will definitely appear to call for ideological shots. A third of Trump’s full cabinets are Catholics from a clear traditional-more explicit vice president JD Vance, who turned in 2019.

Vans recently tried to assume the exegete cloak of the Bible to develop Jesus that we taught us to put closer and cherish in front of neighbors and strangers. The US Vice President ordered the abandonment of being charitable for illegal immigrants. Then the Cardinal Robert Brevost was immediately Posted on X This phrase has made everything “wrong”.

However, it is not about the United States. On the global theater, Vladimir Putin and Shi Jinping may see the American Pope as a “priest” for the “West”, which confirms the Vatican as a spiritual actor of their enemies.

But a closer look at his career and his record determines his position directly in the global south. Liu spent a decade at work as a missionary in Peru among the indigenous people. It has acquired Peruvian citizenship and Latin American believers he sees as one of their own.

Francis will continue to communicate with the believers to the developing world, while he is born and returns an original American. “The reconciliation appears about incompatibility, which is an inspiring option, and its motivation is active:” we are a stomach, amazing and full of hope. “

Leo’s opening speech from the balcony spoke about peace, and peace: If he can employ his clear skills in reconciling the incompatibility to help expectations in the Middle East and Ukraine, he will choose Cardinate well.