Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the US police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and the media that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican\u2019s coronavirus lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In \u201cLet Us Dream,\u201d Francis also criticises populist politicians who whip up rallies in ways reminiscent of the 1930s, and the hypocrisy of \u201crigid\u201d conservative Catholics who support them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But he also criticises the forceful downing of historic statues during protests for racial equality this year as a misguided attempt to \u201cpurify the past.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 150-page book, due out December 1, was ghost-written by Francis\u2019 English-language biographer, Austen Ivereigh, and at times the prose and emphasis seems almost more Ivereigh\u2019s than Francis.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At its core, \u201cLet Us Dream\u201d aims to outline Francis\u2019 vision of a more economically and environmentally just post-coronavirus world where the poor, the elderly and weak aren\u2019t left on the margins and the wealthy aren\u2019t consumed only with profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The publisher said the book was the first written by a pope during a major world crisis and Ivereigh said it was done as a response to the coronavirus and the lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Francis, the pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to imagine and plan for a more socially just world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At times, it seems he is directing that message squarely at the United States, as Donald Trump\u2019s administration winds down four years of \u201cAmerica first\u201d policies that excluded migrants from Muslim countries and diminished US reliance on multilateral diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without identifying the US or Trump by name, Francis singles out Christian-majority countries where nationalist-populist leaders seek to defend Christianity from perceived enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday, listening to some of the populist leaders we now have, I am reminded of the 1930s, when some democracies collapsed into dictatorships seemingly overnight,\u201d Francis wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe see it happening again now in rallies where populist leaders excite and harangue crowds, channeling their resentments and hatreds against imagined enemies to distract from the real problems.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Francis addressed the killing of Floyd, a Black man whose death at the knee of a policeman set off protests this year across the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the US police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and the media that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican\u2019s coronavirus lockdown. In \u201cLet Us Dream,\u201d Francis also criticises populist politicians who whip up rallies in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":84541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84542,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84540\/revisions\/84542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}