Pope Francis is in denial: our struggle is religious, and it’s against virulent Islamism

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” said Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, in what became known as the Regensburg Lecture. It didn’t matter that he was quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor: the indignation was global. Politicians, religious leaders, journalists and scholars were united in their condemnation. Muslims rioted, churches were bombed, crosses were destroyed, effigies of Pope Benedict were burned, and a nun was killed. The fact that there is a certain epistemic tension between the quranic assertion that there is no compulsion in religion, and that Mohammed spread Islam through violence and forced conversion, got lost in the fray.

A certain Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, reportedly expressed his “unhappiness” with Pope Benedict XVI’s use of the quotation. “Pope Benedict’s statement(s) don’t reflect my own opinions,” he said. “These statements will serve to destroy in 20 seconds the careful construction of a relationship with Islam that Pope John Paul II built over the last twenty years.”

Fast-forward 10 years: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now Pope Francis, and he is so concerned to construct a “relationship with Islam” that he denies a crucial reality: “We must not be afraid to say the truth,” he told reporters and journalists on his plane as he flew from Rome to Krakow. And his truth was steeped in a certain irony: “The world is at war because it has lost peace. When I speak of war I speak of wars over interests, money, resources, not religion. All religions want peace, it’s the others who want war.”

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