07/11/15

Pope Offers the Masses the Opium of Marxism

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Bolivian President Evo Morales presents Pope Francis with a crucifix incorporating the hammer and sickle symbol during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz. Photo: Juan Carlos Usnayo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

To my Catholic friends, while I am loathe to criticize that which they hold dear, there comes a time when silence is the wrong answer. When Pope Francis first surfaced, I thought he had the potential to be a great Pope. But with the potential of greatness, also comes the opportunity of infamy. Pope Francis is a Marxist and embodies many, many principles that I stand against, not only as a Constitutional Conservative, but as a Christian. This last week just solidified my uneasiness concerning this Pope.

The Bolivian President, Evo Morales (who Trevor Loudon and I have long contended is a Marxist), presented the Pontiff with a crucifix depicting Jesus nailed to a hammer and sickle, which the Pope returned after a brief examination. What is under contention is what the Pope said when presented with the gift. His comments were pretty much drowned out by a flurry of camera clicks. While some have claimed he expressed irritation, muttering the words “eso no está bien” (“this is not right”), Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Pope more likely said “no sabía eso” (“I didn’t know that”) in bemusement at the origins of the present. Which would make sense as NewsBusters and the Wall Street Journal noted, President Morales also “draped a medallion over [the pope’s] neck that bore the hammer and sickle.”

Communism has murdered well over one hundred million people in the last century alone. Many, many of those were Christians. As Ann Barnhardt put it, “Our Blessed Lord and Savior shown crucified on a hammer and sickle is, by all metrics, worse than Our Lord shown crucified on a swastika.” This constitutes blasphemy for me – Pope or not.

I also disagree that the Pope is being manipulated for ideological reasons. I think he knows full well what he is doing. We seem to have a knee-jerk response now when a leader does something unspeakable, unforgivable or outright evil – he/she didn’t know what they were doing… they were incompetent… or they were being manipulated. Knock it off! These people are not stupid; they are not rubes or babes in the woods who are so easily misled. (That’s not to say that they weren’t misled in very early life, ref. Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” That is to say, if you can indoctrinate someone in his early youth, you won’t need to sway him later: he’s already in your groove, and his decisions and choices will reflect that, not some imagined confusion of the moment.)

As for the Bolivian government insisting there was no political motive behind the gift and the Communications Minister, Marianela Paco, saying that Morales had thought the “Pope of the poor” would appreciate the gesture… bull crap. It’s the melding of politics and religion into a nightmarish agenda that is apocalyptic in scope and intent.

José Ignacio Munilla, bishop of the Spanish city of San Sebastián, tweeted a picture of the encounter, with the words: “The height of pride is to manipulate God in the service of atheist ideologies.” That is exactly right – on all counts, concerning all parties involved. It’s hard to overstate how important that observation is.

The Pope, after arriving in Bolivia, stopped to pray at the death site of Luis Espinal, a Jesuit murdered by Bolivian paramilitary forces in 1980. Espinal is being painted in press reports as a reformer who stood against the military dictatorship in Bolivia. Pope Francis also reportedly received a medal, bearing a hammer and sickle from Morales that was issued in memory of Espinal’s death.

From PopeWatch:

Father Albo showed a reporter a published photo of a crucified Christ attached to a homemade hammer and sickle, instead of a cross, that Father Espinal kept by his bed.

“He was of the left. This is certain. But he never belonged to any party or pretended to be part of one,” said Father Albo, who said he hopes to present a replica of the hammer and sickle crucifix to the pope.

Father Espinal “gave a lot of importance to the dialogue between Marxists and Christians,” he explained. “It was not pro-Soviet … (it was) the need for the church to be close to the popular sectors. Some understand this, others don’t. To me it is very clear.”

It was said that the Pope wasn’t offended by Morales’ gift. “You can dispute the significance and use of the symbol now, but the origin is from Espinal and the sense of it was about an open dialogue, not about a specific ideology,” Lombardi said. Nope, it was all about ideology. This Argentinian Pope has been roundly criticized by many Marxists for not protecting Leftist priests during the military dictatorship in his country. Since becoming Pope, he has made major strides in bringing Liberation Theology to the fore in the Vatican. Thus, his campaigning for massive social and political change. This is Christianized Marxism. The irony of that term has to be savored. Kind of like “therapeutic cancer.”

Although Liberation Theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s–1960s. It is purported that Liberation Theology arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty seen as having been caused by social injustice in that region. But its roots are solidly Marxist. The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement’s most famous books, A Theology of Liberation.

Latin American Liberation Theology met opposition from others in the US, who accused it of using “Marxist concepts” and that lead to admonishment by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican disliked certain forms of Latin American Liberation Theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin; and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous populations.

Pope Francis used his trip to Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to highlight problems faced by indigenous communities and to warn against “all totalitarian, ideological or sectarian schemes.” That sounds very good. However, it started to go off the rails when he urged the downtrodden to change the world economic order, denouncing a “new colonialism” by agencies that impose austerity programs and calling for the poor to have the “sacred rights” of labor, lodging and land. That’s sheer Marxism. And exactly what does he mean by ‘austerity programs?’ You mean the over taxing of the general populace in order that elitists can keep up their glutinous spending sprees? Or do you mean austerity as in cutting spending, sticking to a budget and reducing debts? It certainly makes a difference on how the term is being used here.

His speech was preceded by lengthy remarks from the Left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales, who wore a jacket adorned with the face of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Che was executed in Bolivia in 1967 by CIA-backed Bolivian troops. That certainly set the stage for Pope Francis and his speech.

Then the Pope gave a magnanimous and historic speech asking for forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church in its treatment of Native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America.” This is highly offensive and revisionist – it is skewed history. It’s true that American Indians were slaughtered by evil men and eventually, after a length of time, the colonists took over America. It is also true that Indians slaughtered many of the settlers and in horrific ways. Conquest and war are facts of history by the way, something Europe and the Vatican are very familiar with. It is a human condition that is ongoing and never ending as populations replace each other and wars rage on. He’s apologizing as though the Catholic Church had set out to do those things… it didn’t. Men did those things in the name of governments and in the name of the church. Apologizing for the deeds of men who acted on their own volition, but in your name, is to presume responsibility and control of actions over which the church had neither. The colonists did not set out to ‘conquer’ America either. They fled persecution in Europe and wanted to build new lives for themselves. Conflict came with Native Americans and the rest is history. Yes, evil was done, but that evil was not the totality of the story or our history and it certainly was not one-sided. It is also not something we need to ‘apologize’ for.

Then Pope Francis uttered my favorite quote – he quoted a fourth century bishop and called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil,” and said poor countries should not be reduced to being providers of raw material and cheap labor for developed countries. Actually, when I heard the original quote, it said ‘capitalism’ not ‘money.’ While seeking unlimited riches can be a sin, it is not always so and not all wealthy people are guilty of this sin. It is also true that poor countries should not be treated as merely sources of materials and labor, however, those countries also benefit from that part of the economy. Countries are free to prosper and if more lived under free capitalistic governments where free trade was the norm and people were allowed to innovate and work for themselves, then there would be far fewer impoverished countries. But first, you’d have to get rid of the Marxists and dictators. Kind of a conundrum.

For dessert, the Pope repeated some of his encyclical on climate change. That’s Marxism on a global scale and smacks of fascism as well. It’s a twofer. Climate change is a seductive lie wrapped in a green package, but it is rotten from the inside out.

The Pope closes with what sounds to me like the echoes of Barack Obama and communism:

“Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” the pope said, decrying a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.“

“This system is by now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable The Earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable,” he said in an hour-long speech that was interrupted by applause and cheering dozens of times.

And the useful idiots cheered on even when they knew in their heart of hearts that all of the above is nothing more than a call to follow those that would rule over us, using Mother Earth as a handy excuse and targeting for blame the engines of free enterprise, using language meant to equate it with greed, while overlooking the primary source of real greed: corrupt totalitarian governments, born of Marxism.

Pope Francis was not finished by any means concerning ‘colonialism’:

“No actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty. Whenever they do so, we see the rise of new forms of colonialism which seriously prejudice the possibility of peace and justice,” he said.

“The new colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain ‘free trade’ treaties, and the imposition of measures of ‘austerity’ which always tighten the belt of workers and the poor,” he said.

Last week, Francis called on European authorities to keep human dignity at the centre of debate for a solution to the economic crisis in Greece.

He defended labor unions and praised poor people who had formed cooperatives to create jobs where previously “there were only crumbs of an idolatrous economy”.

The Pope even went so far as to praise Bolivia’s social reforms to spread wealth under Morales. That’s wealth redistribution and again, Marxism. But that is only scratching the surface on this Pope – there is oh, so much more to be concerned about when it comes to Pope Francis.

My friend and colleague (and someone I truly admire) Cliff Kincaid has done excellent research into Pope Francis and his doings. Americans need to take note who has the ear of this Pope:

Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the “American idea” of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.

The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”

In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.

Sachs takes aim at the phrase from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development.

Sachs is putting forth that the UN should be in charge of all national and individual rights. That we have to sacrifice our individual rights for the greater, collective good. What hive mentality. He’s also for massive global taxation, population control and one world government. “We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes,” he wrote. “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity’s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods.” The bill he wants to stick the US with is $845 billion.

The Pope has not only aligned himself with Sachs, but with the UN’s Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12th that climate change is “the defining challenge of our time,” and that the solution lies in recognizing that “humankind is part of nature, not separate or above.” The pope’s encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade. This spells slavery for the world and an all-powerful tyrannical elite who will ruthlessly rule us through Marxist politics and a one world religion.

Sachs is not alone in his ideas. A short time ago, former President Shimon Peres met with the Pope at the Vatican and proposed that the Pope head up a UN for religions. I kid you not.

Via The Jerusalem Post:

But the main topic of conversation was Peres’s idea to create a UN-like organization he called “the United Religions.”

Peres said the Argentina-born pontiff was the only world figure respected enough to bring an end to the wars raging in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

“In the past, most of the wars in the world were motivated by the idea of nationhood,” Peres said. “But today, wars are incited using religion as an excuse.”

Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed to reporters that Peres had pitched his idea for “the United Religions” but said Francis did not commit to it.

“The pope listened, showing his interest, attention, and encouragement,” Lombardi said, adding that the pope pointed to the Pontifical Councils for Interreligious Dialogue and for Justice and Peace as existing agencies “suitable” for supporting interfaith peace initiatives.

The meeting in September was the third one inside of four months. In an interview in the Catholic Magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Peres also called for the Pope to lead the inter-religious organization in order to curb terrorism: “What we need is an organization of United Religions… as the best way to combat terrorists who kill in the name of faith.” I literally cannot believe what I am hearing. This could well be the birth of a one world religion. This looks suspiciously like a move to reclaim the lost glory of the Church, harking back to those centuries when it held sway ’round the world, commanding fealty from kings and nobility. This “progressive” innovation is really a reactionary repackaging of the most sweeping colonialism in history. With one tongue they “condemn” colonialism, while with the other tongue they offer global subservience as the “solution” to the demon du jour.

From Karl Marx:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The Pope is offering the masses the opium of Marxism in his stances. The question is, will the world follow him down this path? So many these days just want someone to give them everything and take care of them… they hunger for a leader who will absolve them of their sins and promise them forgiveness and welcome them with open arms. Will people, in the name of peace, usher in a one world order and willingly give up their freedoms? I’m afraid history says they will, but I know Americans, Christians and others will not be assimilated so easily by Marxist musings and flowery articulation. Pontification will only carry you so far – if you follow this pied piper, you will find yourself in the loving embrace of the UN – that Democracy of Dictators – and all that entails.

04/12/15

Obama Strangles the Monroe Doctrine and Embraces Latin Dictatorships, Communists and Fascists

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I wrote some time ago on how John Kerry went to Latin America and declared the Monroe Doctrine dead. Obama just finalized it in Cuba. The Monroe Doctrine has been in place since 1823 and has long warned America’s enemies to not even THINK about using South America as a back door to bring Communism and aggression to our doorstep. Well, Obama has thrown that proverbial door wide open to South America and has invited in every enemy we have. Hell, he’s thrown our door at the borders open inviting them into the US as well. He wants America at war and brought to her knees and he’s really going for it now.

As Doug Ross pointed out, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought us to the very brink of nuclear war. The Monroe Doctrine stopped that apocalyptic nightmare from becoming a reality. Kennedy “cited the Monroe Doctrine as a basis for America’s ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ confrontation with the Soviet Union that had embarked on a campaign to install ballistic missiles on Cuban soil.” That was before the Democrats went full blown Marxist and decided to destroy America from within her own shores. Obama has now stated for the world that the US will no longer act to resist overseas influence in the Western Hemisphere.

During the seventh Summit of the Americas, our enemies took turns swinging at American foreign policy. From 19th century territorial raids on Mexico to US support for the overthrow of Chile’s socialist government in 1973 and the 1989 invasion of Panama that removed Gen. Manuel Noriega, Washington’s interventions in Latin America were targets of rebuke during long speeches by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his allies. Obama quipped, “I always enjoy the history lessons that I receive when I’m here.” I’ll bet he does. He’s also meeting with Maduro and cuddling with him while he’s there. Dictators of a feather. Next, it will be Obama’s ongoing bromance with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who is a hardline Leftist and a long time ally of South American socialists Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. Last week Correa tweeted “¡Heil Hitler!” in response to a Twitter user posting an article reporting that ex-Ecuadorian President Osvaldo Hurtado had called him a “fascist” for his repeated crackdowns on journalists. I’m sure Obama can relate. Remember, no matter the propagandic rhetoric from Correa on Obama being an “afro American,” Obama held hands with the Ecuadorian president to bring in as many illegal immigrants as he could and the two were aligned on common agendas. Things are never what they appear.

From the White House Dossier:

Obama, who spoke Friday during a “civil society” forum in Panama City, Panama, disparaged past efforts by the United States to forestall the spread of Communism in Latin America and suggested similar missions would no longer be undertaken.

“The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past,” Obama said.

Civil Society forum? How very George Soros… how very Progressive/Marxist. This condones Communism in our hemisphere – here on our turf, for our neighbors with our blessing. Virtually every country in South and Central America is now controlled by Communists and dictators because we decided to stay out of it. Regardless of the threat to America. Now, you’ve got Russians, Chinese and Iranians down there and I very much doubt they are on a goodwill tour. We are blatantly inviting an attack on America and Obama is welcoming it. He is not naive or clueless to the evil down there – he revels in it. He just apologized for the US’ intervention over the last 200 years – that intervention kept us safe and free, but no more.

James Monroe was a wise man who has now been undone by the enemy within here in America:

The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety . . .

With the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

The US now finds itself the one restricted in the Americas – but our enemies are free to roam, plot and attack. This is a recipe for suicidal disaster of historic proportions and Obama knows it.

Obama is about to remove Cuba from the list of states sponsoring terrorism:

Sometime during this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, President Obama is expected to grant one of Cuban President Raul Castro’s top demands and remove his country from the Unites States’ list of governments that sponsor terrorism.

That, as Sen. Robert Menendez warns, not only flies in the face of all evidence, but removes critical leverage in Washington’s efforts to bring scores of fugitive American terrorists to justice.

The latest State Department report on state sponsors of terrorism — a list that has included Cuba since 1982 — notes that Cuba’s longstanding ties to the Basque terrorist group ETA “have become more distant,” though it still provides “safe haven” to its members.

Havana also harbors terrorists who struck in the United States, such as cop-killers Joanne Chesimard and Charles Hill (who also hijacked a plane), FALN bomber Guillermo Morales and scores of others who’ve avoided accountability for their crimes. (Many of those crimes, incidentally, were committed in the tri-state area.)

Weasel Zippers calls it his “reach out to terrorists” initiative. That’s right on the money.

Obama never lets a political platform go to waste and this Summit of the Americas in Panama City was no exception. President Obama expressed his anger and frustration over Iran with those “trying to short-circuit the actual negotiations,” insisting that “it needs to stop” and pointing the finger squarely at the GOP. I’m sure his aggressive sentiments were roundly approved of by all the dictators in attendance.

Raul Castro generously absolved Barack Obama of America’s past imperialism. That’s what Communist families are for right? Better have a barf bag ready – the crap speweth:

Castro, whose country was invited to the gathering for the first time this year, received an ovation when he began his speech by saying the “time had come for him to speak here” on Communist-ruled Cuba’s behalf.

He referred to the United States’ “wars, conquests and interventions” in the region, saying through an interpreter that the country has been a “hegemonic force that plundered territories throughout the Americas.”

Castro recalled that the U.S. Congress authorized military intervention in Cuba in the late 19th century and that led to the establishment of a military base in Guantanamo that still “occupies our territory.”

In the 20th century, the United States carried out a series of “interventions to overthrow democratic governments” in Latin America, where “dictators were installed in 20 countries, 12 of them simultaneously.”

“In South America alone, hundreds of thousands of people were killed,” Castro said, adding that the most “brutal” episode was the 1973 U.S.-backed coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected socialist government.

But after finishing his review of Latin American history, Castro issued an apology to his U.S. counterpart.

“The passion comes out of my pores when the revolution is involved, but I want to apologize to President Obama because he doesn’t have anything to do with all of that,” Castro said, eliciting another round of applause.

“All (of the previous U.S. presidents) are indebted to us, but not President Obama,” who is an “honest man … with a manner about him that speaks to his humble origins,” the Cuban leader said.

So, Obama strangles the Monroe Doctrine and embraces Latin dictatorships, Communists and fascists, while decreeing long live Communism in the Western Hemisphere. Is there anyone out there that still laughably thinks Obama is not an enemy from within? Once again, I join with Doug Ross in longing for a true conservative president. The question is, will we make it to the next election before the Communist crap hits the fan? How can our military leaders not see the impending attack on America that is all but certain when you throw our borders wide open and actually bring in massive amounts of illegal aliens, kill off the Monroe Doctrine, then cozy up to every Communist dictator and fascist in Latin America and as a finale, invite in the Axis of Evil: Russia, China and Iran into your midst… just what do you think is going to happen? Is America truly that suicidally oblivious to our enemies?

Obama, his lieutenants and minions have spent months — even years — crafting a narrative of harm done to Cuba by our embargo of trade with them. What’s missing from this narrative is this almost-never-mentioned fact: “Despite the Spanish term bloqueo (blockade), there has been no physical, naval blockade of the country by the United States after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The United States does not block Cuba’s trade with third parties: other countries are not under the jurisdiction of U.S. domestic laws, such as the Cuban Democracy Act […]. Cuba can, and does, conduct international trade with many third-party countries; Cuba has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995.” (Quote from above link.) So, ponder that for a moment. Cuba is today and has been for decades a cesspool of human rights denial, a commercial and industrial failure, and a place from which natives fled to have any chance of a decent life. This despite the fact that Cuba has been free to trade with the entire rest of the world. It is clear from this that Cuba’s problems do not, even in the smallest degree, originate with America’s refusal to support or endorse the tyranny enforced by the brothers Castro. They did this entirely to themselves.

Obama said of his critics of a potential Iran deal: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of narrow minds.”(*see footnote) So, chaos would be the justice warrior of an open society? Obama is pumping his fist in the air and a la Che Guevara is shouting “Viva la revolucion!” while proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine is dead, long live the dictator.

Unsavory Agents

*(Obama’s familiar sounding “quote” is actually a misquote of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous statement:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Emerson’s actual quote illuminates the small-mindedness of the man who, in an effort to project sophistication, instead utters the bland, repetitious and fallacious consistencies so thoroughly woven through the fabric of his life and administration: that socialism will cure all of Man’s ills. Obama’s attempt to appear the scholar reflects instead Emerson’s “little statesman,” as he dissembles once again.)

03/12/15

Catholic Church Captured by “Progressive Forces”

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Armando Valladares, Castro’s political prisoner for 22 years, said his Catholic faith was strengthened behind bars by hearing young Catholics shouting “Viva Cristo Rey,” for “Long Live Christ the King,” and “down with communism!” as they faced the firing squad. It has been his hope that Cuba would one day be free of communism. But he is far less hopeful now that Pope Francis has taken measures that he says “objectively favor the political and ecclesiastical left in Latin America” and could undermine the “Christian future of the Americas.”

Meanwhile, Marxist writer Richard Greeman has written an extraordinary article, “Catholicism: The New Communism?,” arguing that “progressive forces” have “captured” the Vatican, and that Francis is conducting a “purge” of traditional elements, such as those loyal to anti-communist Pope John Paul II.

Valladares, author of Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag, was the United States Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission under the Reagan and Bush administrations. He writes in a recent column that Francis was the “most eminent architect and mediator” of the Obama administration deal with Cuba that will “now provide the repressive apparatus of the Cuban regime with rivers of money and favorable publicity.”

He goes on, “We are witnessing one of the greatest examples of media sleights-of-hand in history: From a well-deserved image of aggressor, a regime which for decades spearheaded bloody revolutions in Latin America and Africa and continues to spread its tentacles in the three Americas, has been craftily made to look like a victimized underdog.”

He says the responsibility lies with the unexpected rise of a Francis-Obama “axis” in foreign affairs that benefits Marxist governments throughout Latin America.

Valladares, who received the Citizen’s Presidential Medal from President Ronald Reagan, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in communist Cuba in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism. He was tortured and kept in isolation for refusing to be “re-educated.” He was released after 22 years in prison, in 1982, when international pressure was brought to bear on the regime.

Valladares says it’s not just the Cuba betrayal that concerns him. He notes that Francis overturned the suspension of Nicaraguan priest Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a former communist Sandinista foreign minister and a leading pro-Castro figure in liberation theology.

Despite his credentials as a political prisoner turned human rights activist and powerful voice for freedom, his column on the Obama-Francis “axis” has received very little attention. An associate says it seems “too politically incorrect,” an apparent reference to the fact that Francis is a global media star for identifying with the poor, and that liberals and conservatives alike are reluctant to criticize him.

Valladares, however, says the pope has gone far beyond taking up the cause of poor people. His column notes that Francis personally attended something called the World Meeting of Popular Movements last October in Rome. “It gathered 100 revolutionary world leaders, including well-known Latin American professional agitators,” Valladares points out. “The meeting turned out to be a kind of marketing ‘beatification’ of these Marxist-inspired revolutionary figures.”

One of the participants in the Vatican event was Evo Morales, the Marxist President of Bolivia who dedicated his election victory last year to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the late Venezuelan Marxist ruler, Hugo Chávez.

The Vatican’s own description of the meeting referred to changing “an economy of exclusion” and “an idolatrous system of money.” The statement went on, “Together we want to discuss the structural causes of so much inequality (inequidad) which robs us of work (labor), housing (domus) and land (terra), which generates violence and destroys nature. We also want to face the challenge Francis himself sets puts [sic] to us with courage and intelligence: to seek radical proposals to resolve the problems of the poor.”

Valladares isn’t the only one to notice the “radical” or leftward drift of the papacy. Greeman’s article wondering if Catholicism is the “new communism” appears in New Politics, a socialist magazine “committed to the advancement of the peace and anti-intervention movements” and which “stands in opposition to all forms of imperialism…”

New Politics has strong links to the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that backed Barack Obama’s political career from the start. Its “sponsors” include Noam Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West and the late communist historian Howard Zinn.

Greeman notes that the world’s Catholic Bishops have “explicitly pointed to capitalism as the basic cause of impending global catastrophe,” in the form of climate change, and have “called for a new economic order.” He was referring to a group of Catholic Bishops who met at the U.N. climate talks last December and blamed “the dominant global economic system, which is a human creation,” for global warming. They argued for “a new financial and economic order” and the phasing out of the use of fossil fuels.

Greeman says the Bishops’ attack on capitalism was generally ignored, even on the left, and he understands why. There have been so many “rapid changes” coming out of Rome “since the ascension to the Throne of Saint Peter” by Pope Francis that it is hard to keep up with them, he says.

Francis will issue a Vatican document, known as an encyclical, on climate change in June or July.

Greeman writes that these “radically anti-capitalist Catholic positions” have got him wondering whether Catholicism is “the new Communism,” Rome “the new Moscow,” and the church “the new Comintern.” The term “Comintern” refers to the Communist International, an association of national communist parties started by Lenin.

Growing up as a “red diaper baby” during the Cold War, Greeman writes, Catholicism was “synonymous with militant anti-Communism.” But changes that started coming years ago in the church have been accelerating under Francis, he writes. He attributes some of this “change” to Francis, who is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Jesuit, which is a “progressive” religious order whose “solid organization and discipline” and “attempts to take over the Church” go back centuries.

Greeman refers to the Catholic or “universal” Church as “the only actually existing organized world-party,” whose “vast wealth and influence are now in Francis’ hands.” He writes about “the capture” of the church by “progressive forces,” a development which opens up “huge possibilities for human liberation and perhaps a chance for the planet to avoid climate catastrophe.” He believes Francis “and his allies” are now conducting a “purge of the apparatus” in the Vatican.

Writing in Links, an international socialist journal, Canadian activist Judith Marshall discusses meeting the pope during the World Meeting of Popular Movements and witnessing his presentation to the group. “Pope Francis’ forthright statements on the social ministry of the church hearken back to the 1960s and 1970s when liberation theology was such a dynamic force in promoting struggles for social justice, particularly in Latin America,” she wrote. “The symbolism of a World Meeting of Popular Movements which brought a multitude of the poor right into [the] heart of the Vatican has not been lost on those looking for a resurgence of liberation theology.”

Liberation theology was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.

She also insisted that Francis “has arguably made the Papacy the most radical and consistent voice in pointing to the profanity of global inequality and exclusion. He has also repeatedly named the inordinate power of multinational corporations and finance capital as key factors in reproducing global poverty and destruction of the planet.”

She says Francis met with several Marxist activists from Latin America and even met privately with President Morales of Bolivia who “stressed how Mother Earth had become ill from capitalism,” and that “under the prevailing global economy, the planet would actually do better without humans—but humans need the planet.”

In a previous meeting Morales told the pope, “For me, you are brother Francis.” The pope responded, “As it should be, as it should be.”