Pope Francis: The Pontiff Who Embraced Empire
By Darko Lazar
Given the international indifference to the suffering of Palestinians, it is understandable that Pope Francis’ calls for a ceasefire in Gaza — along with his acknowledgment that “Israel’s” military campaign “has the characteristics of a genocide” — were met with appreciation in some Arab and Islamic circles.
However, his condemnation of this humanitarian catastrophe was too often conveyed through sanitized remarks that did not reflect the horrors being unleashed on Gaza. The late pope regularly referred to the genocide as a “conflict” and the “Israeli” genocidaires and their Palestinian victims as equal “warring parties.”
Much like many left-wing politicians in the West, Pope Francis’ sorrow and calls for an end to the violence never translated into concrete action or meaningful intervention.
As the leader of a global religious institution with significant diplomatic reach, the pope could have gone beyond symbolic appeals. Instead, he chose a stance of generalized concern and never directly challenged governments enabling the war.
As such, praising the pontiff’s criticism of “Israel’s” war in Gaza and eulogizing his role in the Catholic Church are not only misguided gestures but also failures to capture the full picture of his stance on a range of issues.
Washington’s Pope
Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was an Argentine of Italian descent. During the period between 1976 and 1983 when Argentina’s military junta engaged in state terrorism by using death squads to kidnap, torture, rape, and murder political dissidents, Bergoglio was the highest-ranking Jesuit in the country.
Human rights lawyers, survivors, and declassified documents show that Bergoglio was complicit in what became known as Argentina’s “Dirty War.” He worked with the military dictatorship of General Jorge Videla, which was backed by the US through covert operations, including the notoriously brutal Operation Condor.
The Argentinian junta and its henchmen were closely allied with the titans of American foreign policy, Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller, who were responsible for millions of deaths in Latin America and beyond.
Unlike the Chilean Catholic leadership that resisted dictatorship, Argentina’s church hierarchy, including Bergoglio, collaborated with the junta.
Bergoglio was even accused of betraying two priests who were tortured after being linked to Liberation Theology — a movement promoting social justice that was despised at the time by the Vatican and the elites in Washington for what some saw as its Marxist leanings.
Bergoglio’s journey from this dark period in history to his rise to the position of Vatican leader as a humble man devoted to the poor had vast geopolitical significance.
In Latin America, the Catholic Church is politically influential and has a great deal of sway on public opinion. In 2013, when Bergoglio was elected pope, this region was turning leftward and opposing US hegemony. The Vatican’s influence became crucial.
With Bergoglio at its helm—a man seen as having reliably served pro-American interests in Argentina—the Catholic Church could once again act discreetly to counter progressive governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
Today, the destabilizing role of the Catholic Church is especially evident in Venezuela where bishops routinely encourage actions against the Nicolas Maduro government both from inside and outside the country.
Pope Francis himself urged Venezuelans to “seek the truth” following last year’s disputed re-election of President Maduro.
But this isn’t the only arena where the pontiff championed Washington’s causes.
In the Catholic Church, he pushed through the so-called Fiducia Supplicans doctrine, which permitted blessings of same-sex unions.
The doctrine is at odds with traditional Christian values and triggered fierce backlash from the Russian Orthodox Church, which accused the Vatican of abandoning biblical teachings and endorsing sin.
But Pope Francis insisted on open support for gender ideology, and he showed unprecedented tolerance toward LGBTQ movements.
He met repeatedly with LGBTQ advocates at his private residence, and during his conversation with actress and transgender advocate Nava Mau, the pope told her to “keep fighting.”
In many ways, Pope Francis’ Vatican advanced social revolutions that are consistent with Western liberal agendas rather than the preservation of the Christian faith.
This was also evident in his endorsement of the indigenous goddess Pachamama, which was worshiped during a Vatican ceremony. Analysts compared Pachamama to the pagan goddess Cybele, and see this as a return of ancient, pre-Christian demonic cults to the heart of Roman Catholicism.
Playing Politics
In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis blended leftist social criticism with advocacy for a liberal world order. He criticized capitalist inequalities but promoted globalist solutions and a world government—without questioning globalist military structures like NATO.
This can be interpreted as the pope’s support for Atlanticist forces and opposition to rising right-wing populist movements in both Europe and America.
In this sense, the pope’s condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza was also part of a wider ideological struggle against the right-wing, nationalist, anti-globalist forces he saw as dangerous — which include the Trump administration, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and others like them.
