by James M. Wall
American right-wing media commentators are trying desperately to gang up on the head of the Catholic Church.
A video compilation of some of the venom and hatred which greeted Pope Francis on his first ever Papal trip to the U.S. are a series of false and ignorant hatred rants.
Pope Francis responded by turning the other cheek. Addressing the U.S. Congress Thursday morning, the Pope:
“challenged Congress and by extension the mightiest nation in history on Thursday to break out of its cycle of polarization and paralysis to finally use its power to heal the “open wounds” of a planet torn by hatred, greed, poverty and pollution.”
Anticipating the Pope’s tone of healing, right wing media fired salvo after salvo of venom at the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics before the Pope even spoke to Congress.
Put together by Media Matters for America, the right-wing clips directed at the Pope offer a series of examples of the racism, hatred and ignorance now pervading elements of our society.
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman provides a more upbeat report on the Pope’s visit. (Click here to view Goodman’s program.)
She cites one segment of the Pope’s address to the U.S. Congress which highlighted the lives and works of four “great” Americans, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.
“In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement,” the pope said. “Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the gospel, her faith and the example of the saints.”
He went on to say, “A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.”
Right-wing media failed in its effort to persuade a necessary number of members of Congress to kill President Obama’s historic Iran nuclear deal.
It will fail again to defeat a humble man wearing the mantle of religious power, quietly displaying that spiritual power in the halls of the U.S. Congress.
Right wing media commentators are no match for the Pope’s Four Horsemen of Lincoln, King, Day and Merton.
The video clips compilation above is from Facebook. Thus far, the posting has reached over 8 million readers.
Wallwritings 
Thank you, Jim. POPE FRANCIS is “OUR” Beloved Pope.
Although I am not a Catholic Christian, to me Pope Francis is a beloved “World Class Leader” because he is a genuine human being, and he speaks truth to power, and he genuinely tries to translate to action what Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are meant to preach and implement.
Pope Francis personifies Christianity in its purest forms; what the “early” and “current” native Arab Christians of Palestine hoped it would be.
I am a BIG FAN of POPE FRANCIS and I sincerely hope that his message to the world will be heard, absorbed, and implemented.
Francis got off on the wrong foot by his encyclical Laudato Si, which adopted the view that learned consensus among informed scientists says man has caused global warming of dangerous proportions. But learned consensus among informed scientists says nothing of the kind as one will learn from reading the likes of Lord Christopher Monckton and Dr. Habibillo Abdussamatov. We have a duty to care for the environment, which is more important than the production of wealth; but, because we have such a duty, we need to discover the actual facts before we act. I fear the empirical facts, discovered by the physical sciences, indicate that the IPCC is dead wrong in its projections, and that the measures it has called for will harm nature and our species. If we care about the environment, our urgent duty is to investigate impartially. The Catholic Church acquired a bad reputation on science and religion in the episode of Galileo, and to correct the tragic errors of the inquisition, Leo XIII laid down Catholic teaching in the encyclical Proventissimus Deus, — that physicist and theologian should each stay in his own field, and avoid rash statements about that which is not yet clearly known. Francis broke that rule, and, for the first time in history, a pope attempted to be an arbiter of the natural sciences, then cast his incondite views, in a field where he has no authority, as church dogma. That is no small mistake. Francis is a sweet, venerable, lovable man but discredited himself by departure from Catholic tradition of which he is guardian as successor to St. Peter, and is now paying a high price for his imprudence. I regret the venom of his critics, but Francis should have known better. The mark of the Catholic Church is not shining holiness, but human weakness, yet miraculous survival (e. g., Matthew 16:18, Luke 22:34).
So beautifully said Mr. Wall. Thank you and thank you again.
it isnt just right wing loonies who fear and hate the pope but all who are wedded to capitalism’s private profit and public loss economics which guarantee great wealth to some, dreadful poverty to many , great unpayable debt to most and a natural environment which suffers under the same treatment that befalls the social environment ; as a commodity to be used to create private profit for the good of some and the ultimate damage of all. until we confront and radically change that system into one that democratically serves all and not just some, all the right wing does is offer more liberal capitalist apologists a sneaky way to look good by comparison.