Pope Francis Passes Away at 88, leaving behind an Anti-Israel Legacy
The Vatican announced that Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, at the age of 88, at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta.
At 9:45 AM, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, announced the death of Pope Francis from the Casa Santa Marta with these words:
“Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow, I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of His Church. He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially in favor of the poorest and most marginalized. With immense gratitude for his example as a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we commend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite merciful love of the One and Triune God.”
Pope Francis was admitted to the hospital on Feb. 14 after being diagnosed with double pneumonia and chronic bronchitis that had left him breathless and unable to read prepared speeches. Pope Francis had a history of respiratory illness, having lost part of one of his lungs to pleurisy as a young man. He had an acute case of pneumonia in 2023.
Despite his health crisis, the Vatican reported that Pope Francis has made daily calls to the pastor of the Holy Family parish in Gaza “to express his paternal closeness to the people there.”
Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is 88 years old. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He replaced Pope Benedict on March 13, 2013, after he resigned in February 2013. Francis was the first pope from the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), the first from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope born or raised outside Europe since the 8th-century Syrian pope Gregory III.
Following Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March.
The pope frequently omitted Judaism when discussing other religions. This was clearly expressed in 2021 when Francis became the first pope to visit Iraq. While there, he hosted an inter-religious prayer service at a ziggurat. The structure is an ancient Mesopotamian site built in the 21st century BCE, built on the purported site of the city of Ur, the birthplace of Biblical Abraham. The prayer event was named “Prayer for the sons and daughters of Abraham.” No Jews were invited to the event.
Pope Francis has worked to enhance Christian-Muslim relations. In 2016, he stated that Islam and Christianity share the “same idea of conquest”, and for that reason, Islam should not be viewed as a threat, said Pope Francis in a newspaper interview this week.
“It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam,” he conceded to the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. “However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.”
In 2019, Francis and Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, signed a statement about Jerusalem, referring to Israel’s capital as Al-Quds Acharif, the Arabic name for Jerusalem. This minimizes the distinctive relationship between Jerusalem and the Jewish people.
This sometimes comes at the expense of Christians. In February, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that on Jan. 3, Pope Francis met with Abolhassan Navab, an Iranian cleric who heads the regime’s University of Religions and Confessions (URC), an entity responsible for overseeing the persecution of Christian converts in Iran.
Pope Francis’ anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian agenda has led him into bizarre theological territory that diverges from traditional Catholicism. This came to a head last December when Pope Francis viewed a nativity scene crafted in Bethlehem and presented by Palestinian officials in Pope Paul VI Hall in Vatican City. The display, depicting the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, featured Baby Jesus lying on a Keffiyeh, a traditional Arab head covering for men that PLO leader Yasser Arafat appropriated as a symbol of Palestinian terrorism.
While Islam reveres Jesus as a non-divine prophet of Mohammad, the “Palestinian” movement has rewritten history, portraying Jesus as a Palestinian. It is believed that the credo was an invention of Yasser Arafat’s adviser Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian, who said in an interview with the Washington Jewish Week on February 22, 2001, that “Jesus was a Palestinian.”
This became the official PLO platform as evidenced by their frequent reference to Jesus as “the first Palestinian martyr” and whose annual Christmas statement reads, “Every Christmas, Palestine celebrates the birth of one of its own: Jesus.”
At a Christmas ceremony in 2019, Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, referred to Jesus as “a Palestinian guerrilla fighter.”
The narrative was incorporated into Christian theology, depicting Jesus as a secular Social Justice Warrior fighting the “Occupation”. “Liberation Theology” is a twist on classical Christian belief, attempting to base Palestinian resistance to Israel as well as Palestinian national aspirations in the Christian Gospel. It includes an intense valorization of Palestinian ethnic and cultural identity as guarantors of a more accurate grasp of the gospel because they are the true inhabitants of the land of Jesus and the Bible. Liberation Theology defines Jesus as a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation. It defines Christianity as a human rights movement.
In an interview in November about a soon-to-be-published book, Pope Francis called for an investigation into claims that Israel is carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza.
Last year, Pope Francis met with Palestinians whose relatives were security prisoners in Israeli jails or were in Gaza. Members of the Palestinian delegation told the media that the pope had described Israel’s actions as “genocide.”
In September, Pope Francis responded to a question about IDF airstrikes in Lebanon that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah; he replied that Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon were going “beyond morality.”
In December, Pope Francis labeled children dying in wars, including in the Gaza Strip, as the “little Jesuses of today,” and said that IDF actions were reaping an “appalling harvest.”
The Vatican supports a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians that would establish an unprecedented militarized Palestinian state inside Israel’s borders that has been ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem.
Pope Francis has a history of being myopic regarding Palestinians and Arabs bent on destroying the Jewish state. In 2015, just a few days after the Vatican officially recognized the Palestinian state, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was granted an audience in the Apostolic Palace. After the meeting, Francis gave Abbas a special medallion, representing the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.” The Pope explained to Abbas that the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.”
