Alan: Earlier today, my lifelong friend JC -- a 68 year-old Catholic Sunday school teacher and life-long servant of the poor -- confided her apprehension that Francis has so rattled "The Old Guard" she expects some sort of Vatican intrigue will result in his assassination. This evening, at an Orange County dinner party, I mentioned my friend's apprehension and a Catholic woman -- a physician -- said she too has been troubled by similar misgiving. Immediately, a third Catholic -- the director of a non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of death row inmates -- spoke of his fears for Francis' life. This much is certain. With each new day, Francis provides fresh insight to the calamity of self-seeking capitalism, even calling money "the dung of the devil." Whether or not my friends' fears of papal assassination come to pass, it is clear that Francis has "taken on" a Vatican establishment heavily populated with grasping career climbers, calculating power brokers and "Banco Ambrosiano" money movers whose wallets are as bloody as Judas' purse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Ambrosiano On this side of the Atlantic, conservative Catholics stand aghast while Francis does everything in his power to cut the crap, to identify Capitalism's obsession with money as this generation's signal sin, and to spotlight the corruption of greed as offering "no way out." Like his Brazilian neighbor Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Francis is already defending himself against scurrilous allegations, insisting he is not a "communist" but a preacher of "the true Gospel!"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/13/brazil-helder-camara
From Rome Reports:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Ambrosiano On this side of the Atlantic, conservative Catholics stand aghast while Francis does everything in his power to cut the crap, to identify Capitalism's obsession with money as this generation's signal sin, and to spotlight the corruption of greed as offering "no way out." Like his Brazilian neighbor Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Francis is already defending himself against scurrilous allegations, insisting he is not a "communist" but a preacher of "the true Gospel!"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/13/brazil-helder-camara
From Rome Reports:
EXTRACT OF POPE'S HOMILYhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/20/1240174/-Pope-Francis-Money-is-the-root-of-all-evil#
(Source: Vatican Radio)Money sickens our minds, poisons our thoughts, even poisons our faith, leading us down the path of jealousy, quarrels, suspicion and conflict. It drives to idle words and pointless discussions. It also corrupts the mind of some people that see religion as a source of profit. 'I am Catholic, I go to Mass, everyone thinks well of me... But underneath I have my businesses. I worship money'. And here we have the word we usually find in newspapers: 'Men of corrupted minds'. Money corrupts us! There's no way out.”“We can never serve God and money at the same time. It is not possible: either one or the other. This is not Communism. It is the true Gospel! They are the Lord's words. While money begins by offering a sense of well being. Then you feel important and vanity comes. We read in the Psalm. This vanity is useless, but still you think you are important. And after vanity comes pride. Those are the three steps: wealth, vanity and pride.”“But, Father, I read the Ten Commandments and they say nothing about the evils of money. Against which Commandment do you sin when you do something for money? Against the first one! You worship a false idol. And this is the reason: because money becomes an idol and you worship it. And that's why Jesus tells us that you cannot serve money and the living God: either one or the other. The early Fathers of the Church, in the 3rd Century, around the year 200 or 300, put it in a very blunt way, calling money 'the dung of the devil'. An so it is. Because it turns us into idolators, fills our thoughts with pride and leads us away from our faith.”