On migrants, perhaps the pope can have a word with his Venezuelan pal Nicolas Maduro

Just in time for U.S. elections, Pope Francis waded into U.S. politics, and as he exhorts others to do, decided to "make a mess."

According to Catholic News Service:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Working to turn migrants away from the prospect of peace and security in a new country is "a grave sin," Pope Francis said.

"It needs to be said clearly: There are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin," he said during his general audience Aug. 28.

The pope began his audience in St. Peter's Square by explaining that he would "postpone the usual catechesis" -- he currently is in the middle of a series of talks about the Holy Spirit -- to discuss "the people who -- even at this moment -- are crossing seas and deserts to reach a land where they can live in peace and security."

"Brothers and sisters, we can all agree on one thing: Migrants should not be in those seas and in those lethal deserts," he said. "And, unfortunately, they are there."

But migrants cannot be deterred from those deadly crossings "through more restrictive laws, nor through the militarization of borders, nor through rejections," the pope said. "Instead, we will achieve it by expanding safe and legal avenues for migrants, by facilitating sanctuary for those fleeing wars, violence, persecution and many calamities; we will achieve it by fostering in every way a global governance of migration based on justice, fraternity and solidarity."

The kindest thing that could be said about the pope's strong statement is that he couldn't possibly be talking about us -- the U.S., after all, takes in a million legal immigrants each year, which is more than any other country. He even mentions the Mediterranean as an area where illegally crossing migrants drown, which he called preventable, but once again pinned on the West for not rescuing them hard enough. Fact is, any Mediterranean Sea death can be prevented simply by obeying other nations' immigration laws, but that might involve personal responsibility, none of which he assigns to migrants or their cartel sponsors.

But since the strongest efforts to turn back illegal migration are in the states, and there's an election on, it's hard to think he wasn't pointing the finger at the U.S. and saying "grave sin," for anyone trying to shut down the border, while ignoring the rapes, robberies, murders, apartment takeovers, wildfires, ecological damage, bus hijackings, gang shootouts, and unsustainable spending brought on by the lower middle classes of the third world gaming the U.S. system in search of the best benefit packages.

It matters because the pope's statement makes a nice dart for Democrats to hurl at Catholic politicians seeking to restore order at the border such as J.D.Vance, Greg Abbott, and Ron DeSantis, even as their own standard-bearers, Catholic abortion king Joe Biden and probably atheist abortion advocate Kamala Harris go without criticism and actually with encouragement. At this point, the politics of the pope's statement gets pretty thick.

The pope's statement also pretty well contradicts past Catholic teaching and even his own statements that sovereign states have a right to control their borders and nations can send illegal border crossers back to their homes. The pope actually said that in a televised interview recently.

It's intellectually sloppy as heck. As this Twitter denizen put it:

“Our pope apparently doesn’t understand the difference between knocking at the door and asking for help and breaking in one’s house and demanding provision.”

Now he's using his moral authority as pope to command the U.S. to take all comers -- killers, rapists, chiselers, gang members, terrorists, spies, saboteurs and other human plagues -- because that is what he's doing, given that the good cannot be sorted out from the bad in an impromptu illegal crossing situation out in some desert badlands, or be a grave sinner.

It's either take them all with catch-and-release, or maintain the customary rule of law such as it is practiced in a hundred and eighty-some other states, and most of us not only don't want to get raped, robbed, or burned out, we have a right to not want that natural result, brought on by an open border that takes all comers, vetted or not.

But what really makes his statement ring hollow is his focus on those who "drive out" migrants, not those who push out migrants, whether it's cartels who entice ordinary members of third world lower middle classes to come who might not otherwise come, or the crappy governments which drive migrants out based on their countries being socialist hellholes. In particular, the worst of them is Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, the socialist monster who just nakedly stole an election from Venezuela's voters in front of their faces, and is now out arresting and torturing kids. Why's he so friendly with that guy, given the migration he's caused, something like a quarter of his country having already fled?

A recent poll showed that some 40% of Venezuelans would like to leave the country based on that vile specter of electoral fraud and the repression enacted to enforce the lie. Thou shalt not steal? Never it heard it from the pope.

In fact, the pope was one of the few leaders who refused to take a stand on Venezuela, unlike virtually all of Latin America, save for the other socialist hellholes of Cuba, and Nicaragua, plus increasingly dictatorial socialist Mexico. Even the weakling U.S. under Joe Biden generally made it clear that Maduro's electoral theft was unacceptable.

I'm not the only one who has noticed the contradictions within the pope's position. Venezuelans have, too:

 

 

So the pope effectively joined Russia's Vlad Putin, China's Xi Jinping, and the mullahs of Iran in sticking up for, and propping up Maduro.

That's set off a new wave of migration that the pope claims to be concerned about. If he were really concerned about this, he'd have a word with his pal Maduro, with whom he is always smiling in pictures, and hold him up as the creator of this surge in migration, the epicenter of which is Venezuela. He might even be able to influence him to make his regime more livable, but of course, that's not what this is about.

Instead, he points the finger at America and the West, scolding us for not cleaning up Maduro's mess for him and keeping him propped up against the actual will of the Venezuelan people.

It's sad stuff. Who would have thought we would have a pope so morally blind and so meddlesome and politicized? The article above said he decided to dispense with "the usual catechesis" about the Holy Spirit for this. That was a rather poor choice.

All one can say about this sorry speech and specter is that he's easy to ignore, having given up all pretense to moral authority with his failure to condemn the monstrous Maduro, the great driver of migration in this hemisphere. That is just sad.

Image: Meme and Twitter screen shot

 

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com