The Left sure does ♥ Pope Francis. Time Magazine is so enamored with the latest pontiff they named him Person of the Year for 2013. For a publication that leans largely secular-left, they were positively gushing…

“He took the name of a humble saint and then called for a church of healing.”

What’s got so many nonreligious and pseudo-Christians excited is the Pope’s seemingly tolerant approach to sin. As CNN said last month ~

Francis has also stirred controversy among some conservatives for trying to steer the church away from focus on social issues such as contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage. In what has been seen as a conciliatory tone toward homosexuals, he has said he was in no position to judge gays.

 
Apparently he’s in no position to articulate what’s sinful and what isn’t either. Here was his response to a reporter during an interview last fall; a question about who decides what “good” is ~

“Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”

 
So what about that whole Ten Commandments thing?
This moral relativism is absolutely destroying Western societies. Instead of buying into this warped philosophy, one would hope the leader of the Catholic Church would take a firm stand for the Word of God, and the one True Faith.
 

To say that Ann Barnhardt (one of my go-to bloggers for all things Catholic) doesn’t quite share Time’s papal admiration would be an understatement ~

Francis is a scourge. He is a chastisement upon us, and we deserve it because we have done basically NOTHING while the Church has been all but destroyed, the Mass turned into an abomination and a mocking of Our Blessed Lord upon the Altar and in the Tabernacle, and Western Civilization destroyed as a direct result.
 
50 million children are murdered every year in the world. Sodomy and fornication are destroying lives and souls at a clip never before seen in human history, and now have as their goal the total and complete destruction of the family unit and the sacrament of marriage. The financial system has been destroyed and the livelihoods of billions of people are, as we speak, being stolen and the loot being distributed amongst a cadre of oligarchs. Mohamedism is running totally unchecked and is now explicitly supported by the maggot-infested carcass of post-Christian civilization, led by the former American republic.
 
Every day souls are lost forever to hell in numbers that are far too horrific to comprehend.
 
And Pope Narcissus I just said that the two greatest problems in the world are youth unemployment and loneliness among old people.

~~~~~~~~
[Yeah. She doesn’t pull any punches.
I happen to be Lutheran, but if all Catholics were such stalwart defenders of the Christian faith (starting with the Pope!) I might almost consider converting.]

Francis also believes that the church needs more interreligious dialogue ~

[Just as an aside, what I find particularly frustrating is how frequently the pope seems to contradict himself; often in the very same sentence…]

Francis of Assisi, the pope said, also “tells us we should work to build peace,” which can come about only by overcoming a relativistic view of the world, “which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of all peoples.”
 
The title of pontiff, he said, means builder of bridges. [ 😯 who knew?!] “My wish is that the dialogue between us should help to build bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and embraced,” he said.

 
The preceding has been a (probably too lengthy) lead-in to the main topic of this post, which is this: the Pope’s seeming indifference to the ongoing persecution of Christians by Islamists. Robert Spencer, in an article at PJMedia, reports on a letter written to Pope Francis by a Pakistani Catholic woman imprisoned for making “blasphemous remarks;” a death sentence hanging over her head for more than four years now ~

In her letter to Pope Francis, (Asia) Bibi wrote: “I do not know how long I can go on and on. If I am still alive, it is thanks to the strength that your prayers give me. I have met many people who speak and fight for me. Unfortunately still to no avail. At this time I just want to trust the mercy of God, who can do everything, that all is possible. Only He can liberate me.”

 
It’s hard to predict whether Francis will respond, either privately or publicly to Bibi’s appeal, but considering his present focus on building bridges, it’s not likely that he’ll risk burning any. He’s certainly taking a much different approach to the Muslim world than his predecessor did ~

After Muslims in Egypt massacred 21 people in a New Year’s Eve 2011 bombing of a church, Pope Benedict spoke out in January 2011 against the persecution of Christians in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. When Benedict dared to raise his voice in that way, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the world’s most prestigious Sunni Muslim institution, reacted angrily, breaking off dialogue with the Vatican and accusing the pope of interference in internal Egyptian affairs. In a statement, Al-Azhar denounced the pope’s “repeated negative references to Islam and his claims that Muslims persecute those living among them in the Middle East.”
 
Benedict stood his ground, and that was that. But in September 2013, Al-Azhar announced that Pope Francis had sent a personal message to Ahmed Al Tayyeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar. In it, according to Al-Azhar, Francis declared his respect for Islam and his desire to achieve “mutual understanding between the world’s Christians and Muslims in order to build peace and justice.”

 
2014 years after the birth of Jesus Christ, the world is in a giant mess. With all due respect, what we need from the head of the Catholic Church is not tolerance for sin, or pointless interreligious dialogue. We need staunch defenders of the faith, who know that good and evil are not subjective concepts. We need leaders who will defend God’s absolute Truth with their very lives.
 
Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. (Luke 19:10) He sure didn’t come to dialogue!
 

 
Related:

Unpacking the Latest Hot Mess from Pope Francis ~ More righteous commentary from Ann Barnhardt. Recommended reading for a more thorough understanding of why Francis is the Left’s favorite pope.