By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Doing the research and investigative work that the major U.S. media have all but abandoned, an organization called the American Life League (ALL) has uncovered dramatic evidence of links between the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church and an international communist group known as the World Social Forum. The evidence suggests overt Marxist influence on the climate change movement that Pope Francis and his top advisers are now embracing.

The ALL report, a 76-page PowerPoint presentation complete with original source material and numerous photographs, documents how Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican’s top social justice organization, is actually “providing leadership” to the communist group.

The report’s author, Michael Hichborn, stated, “This is a very serious problem. Given how intimately connected the World Social Forum (WSF) has been with the promotion of communism, abortion, and homosexuality since the very beginning, it’s impossible to see how any Catholic can participate in it, or even speak positively about it, let alone have any involvement in its governance. But Caritas Internationalis does!”

These allegations can’t be dismissed as anti-Catholic bigotry, since the American Life League is itself a Catholic organization that has been working for years to expose Catholic funds and organizations that promote causes at variance with official Catholic teaching.

However, Hichborn tells Accuracy in Media that except for specialized publications such as Lifesitenews, the media have ignored the report.

The ALL report on the WSF includes eye-opening photographs from the group’s events, featuring open displays of communist flags and banners as well as images of such personalities as Lenin, Castro and Mao.

Most of our media, of course, reported on the “death” of communism after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But the ALL report notes that “There can be no mistaking the materialist and revolutionary (Communist) nature of the forum itself, which sets it in opposition to the Catholic Church.”

Hichborn told AIM that he delivered a copy of the report to the Vatican office known as Cor Unum, but that nothing came of it, and that one Vatican official concerned about the issue was relieved of his duties.

ALL identifies the other Catholic groups involved in the activities of the WSF as Pax Christi, Center of Concern, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Catholic Relief Services and CIDSE, an international alliance of Catholic development agencies.

An independent review of the ALL report confirms the research into the links between Caritas Internationalis and the WSF. In fact, a document on the Caritas website still affirms that “Caritas has been involved in the WSF since its beginnings. Caritas believes it’s an opportunity to exchange ideas and to build the momentum towards real change.”

After the ALL report was released, a conference at the Vatican was sponsored by Caritas Internationalis that featured Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University professor and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Marxist-oriented Liberation Theology.

As Accuracy in Media reported, Sachs wrote an article for the Jesuit publication America attacking the “American idea” of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as narrow and selfish. He suggests that America’s founding document is outmoded and incompatible with his idea of Catholic teaching about social justice.

Sachs is an advocate of global taxes to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people in order to finance some form of world government. The climate change movement, based on dubious science, is the most popular current vehicle that Sachs and others can use to bring this about.

Seizing on Sachs’ extraordinary remarks in a major Catholic publication, the well-known writer Edward Cline comments on the Family Security Matters website that “It would take a village—or, at least, the ‘global’ one—to subjugate and sack America. That is what is being proposed by Jeffrey Sachs.”

The Cline piece carries the title, “The ‘Sach-ing’ of America,” and he concludes that “In its essentials, Sachs’ plan for the future sacking of America differs little from Islam’s.”

In short, the American way of life is at risk, this time from a Vatican alliance with America’s academic elites and the U.N.

The World Social Forum itself just held another international conference focusing on one aspect of the Sachs agenda: global taxes. The WSF announced the launch of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, including a statement that “Our vision entails progressive redistributive taxation polices that fund the vital public services, end inequality and poverty, address climate change and lead to sustainable development.”

The topic fits nicely with the expected papal encyclical on climate change.

At the Caritas conference, Pope Francis adviser Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga said that critics of the proposed papal document are advocates of an “ideology” that he concludes “is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits.”

Critics are concerned because of the pope’s several statements indicating hostility to the system of capitalism and free markets that has brought prosperity to hundreds of millions of people.

This kind of Marxist rhetoric from a top Vatican adviser makes it appear as if the pope has aligned himself with an ideology that, despite the “collapse” of communism, is still very much alive, and which the Black Book of Communism says has already claimed 100 million lives.

The recent cordial Francis visit with Cuban dictator Raul Castro only adds to the growing concern.

“Pope Francis will give us his encyclical letter on ecology,” said Maradiaga, anticipating its impact. “This year is a unique opportunity to take responsibility for the future of our world and the lives of future generations.”

The title of the Caritas conference was, “One Human Family, Caring for Creation.” But it appears that the “caring” part lies in replacing capitalism with structures of “global governance” that involve a massive transfer of political and economic power to international organizations like the United Nations.

After Maradiaga stepped down, he was replaced by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, Philippines, as the new president of Caritas Internationalis. But Maradiaga continues as the coordinator of a group of nine cardinals that serves as Francis’s Council of Cardinals.