Pope Francis has died

:(

And for political side - in Poland, he was seen as way too leftist/liberal for the conservatives in Church, and too pro-Russian for the liberals in it - he had not condemned Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This was a very interesting thing to witness. It seemed to indicate that politics is more powerful than religion, even in a country as religious as Poland.

I found this surprising and genuinely thought-provoking.

The concept of Liberal in the US is different from liberal in Europe. In Europe "liberal" means supporter of low taxes, small govertment. The concept in the US has to do with sexual liberation and sexual freedom more than economic marxism.

Francis was not sexually liberal. He was marxist. He believed in liberation theology.

As someone who knew personally the man from a spiritual exercises' house in Spain(obviously when he was not yet Pope), I never liked the guy.

He was the friend of dictators. Loved so much Raul Castro, and Maduro, never criticised them, but criticised the affluence of western democracies. His business was the poor and he loved poor makers.

His support for Putin and not denouncing the takeover of absolute power was jarring for someone in his position.

You can be a leftist religious leader, but you have to report abuses when you see them, specially if the abuses are made by your friends. Of course you will lose them if you do.

Francis was too weak in character to oppose them. But as a Pope, that is your job.

I had been talking with my conservative colleagues - they were deeply unhappy with him on stance of migration, LGBT issues, or even very recent - his talk with Vance, whom they support (American politics are just so big that it has effect on us even across the ocean).

Then, from religious point of view - they didn't really like his ecumenism approach, to them it was borderline of heresy.

I was born in, and currently live in Poland. It truly blows my mind that any Polish person could side with a foreign political party that openly sides with moscow over Ukraine and even Poland. Political alignment is truly the strongest drug for many people.

At one point Francis said "The Patriarch cannot become Putin’s altar boy", in reference to Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church [1]. Maybe Francis recognised that working to get Kirill to temper his support for Putin would be more effective than his own public condemnation, which might allow propagandists to whip up a Western vs. Orthodox religious frenzy to unify Russians behind Putin?

[1] https://www.wn.catholic.org.nz/adw_welcom/pope-says-kirill-m...

He was a man of hypocrisy:

Immigrants must be welcome as a moral imperative, but not in the Vatican!

Bigotry is wrong, except for the modern Marxist form!

Embrace the Progressive world view, but don’t talk about how we forcibly sterilized people!

Etc.

While I support Ukraine and would like to see a stronger, more unified front from the collective West, making this the only question that matters in Polish politics seems wrong. My 2c.

Also, while I think that barring a fringe part of society, everyone would agree, the fun part is, how do you get to people to agree who's pro-Russian or not ;) Of course, this is for local parties, but go to /r/Poland and /r/Polska and ask them, what parties are pro-Russian. Then to Wykop, both Mikroblog and frontpage, and see the reactions.

Same thing will apply here.

Anecdotally, my uncle just dropped by to thank me for the Easter flowers I had left at their place. He is pretty conservative, had always railed against this pope, and just called him a really good man. So at least today, religion and forgiveness won his heart.

> The concept of Liberal in the US is different from liberal in Europe. In Europe "liberal" means supporter of low taxes, small govertment. The concept in the US has to do with sexual liberation and sexual freedom more than economic marxism.

It isn't a purely US vs Europe thing though – you will find some Americans who call themselves "classical liberals", by which they mean "liberal" in largely the same sense as many Europeans do. It is just that "classical liberal" is somewhat of an obscure term in the US–you are only likely to know it if you are interested in or have studied economics, politics, etc–but among those Americans who know it there are definitely some who identify with it.

"Progressive" avoids this to some extent, in being a term which is closer to meaning the same thing in the US and Europe – although in a US context, "progressive" often means something in the same direction as "liberal" but going further.

Some people like to talk about two dimensions, social vs economic – so a person can be socially conservative but economically progressive (not an uncommon position among some conservative Catholics, for example) – although that still has the limitation that "socially progressive/conservative" is a selection of issues with an assumption that people's positions across them are correlated, but there are people who break the assumption, e.g. self-described "consistent pro-lifers" who oppose both legal abortion and the death penalty (unlike many "pro-lifers" in the US who oppose legal abortion yet are pro-death penalty), or certain radical feminists who support LGB rights but oppose transgender rights ("gender critical" as they prefer to call themselves, with "TERF" being the pejorative label applied to them by their opponents)

Some of these linkages are country specific – e.g. in the US, most social conservatives support the death penalty and oppose gun control, in some other Western countries you may find most social conservatives opposing the death penalty and supporting gun control, even while they agree with US social conservatives on other issues.