Pope Questioned About Accepting Only Muslim Refugees
“I gave priority to children of God”
Apparently, Pope Francis shares Obama’s view of Middle Eastern Christian refugees. Despite the State Department’s reluctant statement that ISIS is committing genocide on Christians and on other Muslims throughout the Middle East, the Obama admin has been deporting and denying refuge to Middle Eastern refugees . . . those who are Christian, that is.
Pope Francis has also decided to open the Vatican exclusively to Muslim refugees.
A Christian brother and sister from Syria say they have been ‘let down’ by the Pope after he left them behind in a Lesbos refugee camp despite promises they would be given a new life in Italy.
Roula and Malek Abo say they were two of the lucky ‘chosen 12’ refugees selected by the Vatican to be taken from the desperate camp and housed in Rome.
But what seemed like the chance of a lifetime was cruelly snatched away when they were told the following day they couldn’t go. Instead three Muslim families were taken.
According to Vatican spokesman, the Christian refugees who were initially told they would be taken to Rome were ultimately passed over because their papers were not in order.
The Daily Mail continues:
Spokesman Massimiliano Signifredi called the incident ‘regrettable’ – adding: ‘The problem here is the three Syrians arrived after the March 20 deadline. They arrived just after the agreement between the European Union and Turkey.
Mr Signifredi said: ‘Our staff went to Lesbos and spoke with the people who were selected. But everything was decided by the Vatican.
‘The question why the Pope took only Muslims is difficult to understand and he was suffering, I think, because he wanted to do something also for Christians as the chief of the Catholic Church. But he couldn’t because there is this international agreement [with the EU].’
The Vatican declined to comment.
The pope was asked in an interview conducted on his flight back to the Vatican about his decision to accept only Muslim refugees.
When an aide suggested Pope Francis offer to fly some Syrian refugees back to Rome with him, he said he answered yes immediately because it was “an inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”
In the end, he said, 12 Syrians – members of three families, including six children – had all the necessary papers from the Greek and Italian governments in time to fly with the Pope.
The fact that the 12 are all Muslims did not enter into the equation, the Pope said. “I gave priority to children of God.”
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Comments
If you bake cookies for prison inmates, people will complain you should have baked them for nursing home patients (Matt 25:36). To think the Pope was spurning Christians purposefully is laughable. Unfortunate situation.
If your aunt was put in the nursing home by an escaped convict; why wouldn’t you want to comfort your aunt first?
You are being disingenuous. And so is the “Pope”.
Look up the history of the “appeasement” approach to National Foreign Policy and its effects. ( good example : World War II ).
You might want to look into why the Catholic Church has antisemitism problems. Especially in the Middle East region.
A more apt analogy would be baking a cake with a knife in it so a convict can stab your aunt.
How entertaining it is that everyone seems to want to appease those who are committing the atrocities instead of telling them to knock it off. If he wont stand up to protect Christians, then who will? Guess it doesn’t bother him very much that his flock is getting slaughtered.
Perhaps the paperwork for the Christians was not in order….because they were fleeing for their lives. I hope the Pope reflects on this incident, because the optics are horrendous. It seems as if he is placing politically correct messaging ahead of the one he is suppose to be giving.
The Vatican was very up front and public at the very beginning about not picking anyone past the March 20 deadline for the EU-Turkey deal. Even if the Vatican found a different Christian family to help – not that I’ve heard anything of the sort – this particular Christian family is out of luck.
The line in the articles bouncing around about, are you really going to let a little thing like registration papers get in the way? Oh, goodness. The Vatican can’t force Italy to suspend a treaty negotiated by the EU with Turkey, and if it could, it’d be a crazy mess.
Here’s the bottom line. If the Vatican wanted to find another Christian family that arrived before March 20, it could. No one has seen any indication it wants to.
That said, the Vatican is not an EU country and has no control over EU immigration policy. The only alternative would be human trafficking through use of a diplomatic flight. That would not end well for anyone.
This Pope has been a grave dissapointment to Conservative Catholics like me. He is more interested in palling around with Fidel Castro and Barack Obama than really leading the fight against the persecution of Christians by Muslims.
Catholics need to follow the example of St. Benedict and hunker down and practice their faith and wait for a better leader than this Marxist follower of liberation theology.
The fact that he did the politically correct thing is no surprise. The fact that they have to make a whole bunch of excuses is also no surprise. They have to do that every time he says or does anything at all.
“…this Marxist follower of liberation theology.”
That is just what I was thinking. I’d be surprised if he had a different view than his ideological brethren Fidel Castro or Barack Obama.
What gets me is not his actions, per se, but the accompanying lack of clarification about the actions. Yes, it is one thing to note that all are children of God, and in this case needing help. But what would have it cost him to give a lament and cry (as JBourque has implied, above) to explain that the culling was random or that there was no intent to take only Muslims, or that the deck was stacked against Christians politically and the Vatican did the best in a bad situation? As a mere layman, I’m not owed that explanation, but time and time again in a long line of analogous situations, such explanations would have gone a long way to help improve relations with the faithful at large. Too much silence of motivations.
As a Christian, I don’t give much credence to what the Pope says. He’s only a man who picks winners and losers just like the rest of the Ruling Class.
“As a Christian” – as if the Pope were not a Christian?
Is he Marxist or Christian. I’m not entirely sure one can be both at the same time.
“He’s only a man who picks winners and losers just like the rest of the Ruling Class.”
Found something we agree upon.
Since these Muslim refugee families are all people created in the image of God, I hope that now they’re in the Vatican the Pope and Church will do them the best turn they possibly can, which is to share the Gospel with them.
I don’t think the Pope meant anything harmful with his statement but in the bigger picture, religion is probably the largest killer of humans than any other phenomenon so far on earth. If we are struck by a large meteor or space object then all bets are off. I am at a loss to understand how a person’s religion could impel them to want to convert or kill any other person. I truly believe we have benefitted from religious teachings concerning interaction with each other but I can’t understand the hatred spawned by religion. If we could all just adopt the “Golden Rule” and dump all the other religious teachings/prejudices we would be better off. IMHO!
“in the bigger picture, religion is probably the largest killer of humans than any other phenomenon so far on earth.”
Oh, I think the atheistic philosophy known as communism has religion beat by a long shot.
“I gave priority to children of God.”
What? What? What a stupid response. Pope Dope got called out and couldn’t come up with a good answer. Not unlike Hillary Clinton.
The way I read it, it’s his way of saying he’s treating everyone equally (all of us are children of God) which should seem nice in principle. At any rate, that’s the foundational building block of our legal system. I don’t see anything problematic with the particular quote, except that I would have liked to have seen further clarification.
And whether or not we agree on this, I hope we can find commonality that even if the Pope went 0 for 3 (families) or 0 for 12 (people), that is nothing compared to Obama’s track record of bringing back persecuted Middle East Christians (0 for 1000s?).
Let’s hope Obama keeps batting .000. There is no reason to bring anything but Christian refugees.
I’m not a fan of this Pope.
I’m sorry, the Pope doesn’t know his Bible. John clearly states that you must receive Jesus in order to have the right to be a child of God (John 1:12)