The first Pope I loved

Pope Francis didn’t change Church doctrine—but he changed the tone, the focus, and the global conversation. As the world tilts rightward, his death raises the question: will the Church follow or will it respect his legacy? 

I lost my Catholic faith in my teens, resenting the Church’s over -riding obsession with controlling people’s sexuality and bodies. But over the past decade, I came to cherish Pope Francis as a moral compass in an increasingly hostile world. Pope Francis did not substantially change the Church’s official stance on issues like abortion and gender identity, two issues where I respectfully remain at odds with the official church. 

 But he changed its order of priorities, putting social inequality and the globalisation of indifference towards migrants and the poor at the top of his agenda, while side-lining divisive culture wars. That is why progressives including atheists and agnostics, felt at home in Pope Francis’ broad humanistic Church, while clerical conservatives and traditionalists resented him viscerally. 

I grew up under the shadow of John Paul II’s grandstanding papacy: that of a charismatic and conservative Pope whose priority was confronting—and ultimately contributing to the toppling of—totalitarian communism in Eastern Europe. In contrast, his rebuke of capitalist injustices was muted and directed only against its ‘excesses’, not its fundamental flaws. Moreover, in doing so, he marginalised those in his own Church—like liberation theologians—who were confronting capitalism and the violence of right-wing regimes, particularly in Latin America. And while priests were censured for standing with the poor or for advocating women’s rights, his papacy turned a blind eye to sexual predators within its ranks. 

This was followed by Pope Benedict’s denouncement of “the dictatorship of relativism”, which— in the absence of communism—was directed against LGBTQ people and aimed at stopping the tide of social liberalism. While he should be credited for understanding the gravity of the crimes committed by a system designed to protect sexual predators, this only amplified the contrast between a Church obsessed with controlling everyone else’s sexuality and the depravity of some of its own high-ranking members.

It was in this context that Pope Francis shifted the Church’s focus to a critique of capitalism’s inherent and deep flaws. “Let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change,” the Pope said while visiting Bolivia in 2015, 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, workers 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.”

From the start of his papacy, he positioned himself against an ascendant far right, condemning the “globalisation of indifference” during one of his first major speeches as Pope, delivered in Lampedusa in 2013. He also denounced the structural basis of oppression: “the culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles.” 

And following Donald Trump’s election, he wrote to U.S. bishops denouncing the programme of mass deportations: “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” Sure, his compassion and call for justice also raised expectations that he ultimately could not—and probably did not even want to—deliver. On abortion, he changed the rules, allowing all priests, and not just bishops or their delegates, to absolve women who had committed this ‘sin’. But while he still described the act as murder, he framed it more as a symptom of a “throwaway culture” than a condemnation of women. 

Neither did he rock the boat by challenging the male monopoly on the priesthood, and he backtracked on a highly symbolic proposal to allow priests to officiate blessings of same-sex unions—on the understanding that this was not equivalent to marriage. This tacit acceptance of inequality ultimately jarred with Pope Francis’ message of social justice. 

Yet one must recognise that, unlike others in his flock, he resolutely scorned the far right’s appropriation of Catholic traditional values. Nor did he condone the denial of the Eucharist to Catholic pro-choice leaders like Joe Biden. He even described Italian radical and pro-choice activists Emma Bonino as one of Italy’s one of "Italy’s forgotten greats" for her advocacy of human and migrant rights. Ironically, his last official meeting was with J.D. Vance, a Catholic traditionalist who stands on the opposite side of the spectrum. 

Now, his death presents the Church with a stark choice: a relapse into traditionalism in a world that has swung to the right, or a steadfast commitment to social justice and engagement with modernity. This makes the next conclave one of the most pivotal moments in Church history.

Gaza: War Crimes, Complicity, and Paralysis

The bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave nine days ago in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs tied and gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to eyewitnesses. The United Nations has called for an investigation into a crime reminiscent of past pogroms, war crimes, and genocides. Yet, there has been little indignation—not just in the United States, which shares direct responsibility after consenting to Netanyahu’s decision to resume the war, but also in Europe. The most shocking reality is that the war in Gaza has become business as usual. There is no discussion of sanctioning Israel, despite mounting evidence of war crimes, including domicide, forced displacement, and the use of starvation as a weapon.

Nothing can justify this level of complicity with Israeli war crimes. This is not a matter of proportionality. What we are witnessing is a far-right regime using Hamas’ war crime as a pretext for the elimination of an entire community—one that was already being oppressed long before October 7, 2023. EU leaders fail to call a spade a spade when they describe Israel’s response as merely disproportionate.  Because genocidal intent can never be seen as being proportional to anything else.  It is a crime.

However, it would be a disservice to the Palestinian cause not to acknowledge the other elephant in the room: the absence of a national leadership capable of standing up to Israel while negotiating on behalf of the Palestinian people. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been entirely absent, unwilling to stand up for his people. Meanwhile, Hamas’ cult of death and martyrdom does a disservice to their cause. Last week’s protests in Gaza against both Israel and Hamas were significant—not just in their scale, but in the reactions (and silence) they provoked.

“We demonstrated today to declare that we do not want to die. Eventually, it is Israel that attacks and bombs, but Hamas also bears direct responsibility, as do all who define themselves as Arab and Palestinian leaders,” one protester said. Tragically, one of the protest leaders was reportedly kidnapped and murdered.

That said, the paralysis of Palestinian politics is the result of Israel’s long-standing ‘divide and rule’ strategy, including its covert co-option of Hamas to weaken Fatah and its left-wing partners. Meanwhile, militant secular Palestinian leaders like Marwan Barghouti—who could take the liberation struggle to the next stage—languish in Israeli prisons. The stark reality is that Israel prefers fighting a band of criminal fanatics, whose actions serve as a pretext for its aggression, rather than confronting a rational and determined Palestinian leadership—one that is willing to take up arms against oppression but does so judiciously, with the welfare of the population in mind.  

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Benigni’s European Imaginary and Its Contested Legacy

A few days ago, during a peak-time show on Rai, Italian actor/screenwriter Roberto Benigni hailed the "European dream" conjured by the "heroes of Ventotene"—Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Eugenio Colorni—who drafted the 1941 Manifesto calling for a federal European Union based on democratic socialist, liberal, and republican values.

In these dark times, Benigni went on to exhort us to be proud to be European: "Europe is the smallest continent in the world that lit the fuse of all revolutions; it transformed the planet, it forged the greatest thoughts of humanity, inventing logic, reason, doubt," as well as "freedom, democracy, theatre, sport, modern chemistry, social conscience," among others, creating a "common heritage, an immense treasure in all fields."

Not surprisingly, Benigni’s call resonated with the liberal left but irked the post-fascist Giorgia Meloni, who retorted in parliament: "I don't know if this is your Europe, but it's certainly not mine."

This is a reminder that 'Europe' itself is an imaginary construct rooted in ideology and history. Of course, Benigni referred to the best of European traditions—harking back to Machiavelli and Spinoza, the idea of progress and justice unleashed by the 1789 and 1848 revolutions, and the heroic anti-fascist struggles, both during the war and in the upheavals of 1968. However, his eulogy overlooks the dark side of European history: feudalism, the Crusades, colonialism, anti-Semitism, and fascism—traditions that were never extinguished and are alive and kicking in the far right. In a way, he was offering comfort food for the disoriented—a celebration of what distinguishes us from the vulgarity and rudeness of Trump's America. But on another level, Benigni's exhortation is an invitation to reclaim that Europe of immense possibilities. This may well translate into a civic patriotism that offers hope in a time of despair.  

But like any ideology, the European 'imaginary' is rooted in a historical context. The European social model itself is a fragile historical incident, based on the realisation by elites on both sides of the Atlantic that the only way to prevent communist revolution in this patch of earth was through social democracy, with security needs outsourced to the USA. Of course, this was no clear-cut process, and there were instances—similar to what happened on a much larger scale in Latin America—where the US relied on reactionaries and even fascists to prevent communists from winning power through elections in countries like Italy. Still, by the end of the 20th century, Europe had become a beacon of rights and social liberalism, which explains its appeal to young and educated people in Eastern Europe. In fact, the Russian invasion of  Ukraine can by partly explained by Putin's Russia's fear of the European imaginary—a fear triggered by the Euromaidan uprising—that it could represent a different future not only for the former subjects of the Czarist and Stalinist empires but also for Russia itself.  In fact, Putin represents the rejection of a long-standing European Russian tradition shaped by advanced liberal and socialist ideas which emerged in the continent particularly in communities of exiled revolutionaries whose commitment transcended borders.

Yet this imaginary remains contested, as it risks being deformed and reshaped by an aggressive right wing  that may use this difficult historical moment to push forward a militaristic agenda, potentially making the continent even more dependent on the US. The right is already winning many cultural battles, including on migration, where Malta’s Labour PM is doing Meloni’s bidding in an attempt to reword the European Convention on Human Rights. Moreover, incrementalists like Meloni  may be even more dangerous—diluting European values from within instead of openly rejecting the EU project.  That is why the left should engage with the emerging civic movement for European unity rather than retreat into a 'holier-than-thou' puritanism and equidistance, which in the current circumstances borders on the myopic and the moronic.  But the left can save such a movement from its own pitfalls; by stressing the importance of social and economic reforms aimed at restoring a social model, eroded by two decades of austerity which left the continent vulnerable to the onslaught of the far right.

How Netanyahu's response has vindicated the 'decolonisation' narrative on October 7

A year ago, as my mind processed the horrific news of a massacre of Israeli civilians, I struggled between two compelling narratives. According to one narrative, which framed the reaction of most Western countries, the Hamas attack represented another dark chapter in a history of pogroms and genocidal acts targeting the Jewish people. While this narrative ignores the historical reality of occupation that preceded this attack, the sheer scale and brutality of the assault carried out by an organization whose charter still calls for the eradication of Israel and reiterates tropes like the Protocols of Zion point in this direction. 

However, according to another narrative, the attack had all the hallmarks of ‘decolonisation’—a reaction from a marginalized, dehumanized, oppressed, and colonized indigenous population to an occupation by a settler state transplanted in the region by colonial powers. In short, on October 7, Hamas broke out of jail and went on a rampage whose inhumanity mirrored that of the occupiers. No wonder this narrative found traction in the Global South, which has experienced the brutal logic derived from colonial tropes like manifest destiny, the white man’s burden, and the superiority of settler populations over indigenous “people without histories”—surplus and disposable populations whose lives have less value than those of the occupiers. For the message coming from western capitals in the past year was loud and clear: Palestinian lifes are less valuable then Israeli lives. 

One year on, the sheer impunity that met repeated violations of international law by Israel and the scale of destruction and loss of life in Gaza, and now in Lebanon, vindicates the latter interpretation. But this vindication also increases the daily risks faced by Jewish communities worldwide, which should not be underestimated. For while the Israeli government, in its role as a settler state, is viewed positively by a large segment of the global far right, Jewishness still represents an ‘otherness’ deeply rooted in a dark past, both in the West and among reactionary movements in the Middle East. That is why even for the sake of protecting Jewish populations in both Israel and the rest of the world, it is crucial to bring an end to this madness and to stop Bibi’s insane war. However, the long-term solution depends on decolonizing Israel and Palestine and ensuring full equality and security for all inhabitants living in both present-day Israel and Palestine. 

Still, acts of decolonisation are not immune from genocidal intentions, and while anti-colonial resistance is justified, the October 7 attack represents a very dark chapter in the history of anti-colonial resistance, fatally blurring the lines between anti-Semitism and legitimate uprising.

Why the far right gets so worked up with drag queens

In a world of monsters feeding on fear and anxiety to create more of it and thus ensure a good picking in the next harvest, it is no surprise that images are deployed in pointless culture wars while the world is literally burning. My first call was to dismiss the controversy on the last supper/ Dionysian bacchanalia representation and worry about more serious matters like global warming. After all it looks like another clash between the stuffy world of mullahs of all stripes and artists playing on symbols and cultural archetypes,as they have done for centuries. Sure some would ask what would liberal leftists have said if the image being mocked and parodied was Islamic? Apart from the fact that the Olympic games are being held in France (where the dominant culture is not Islamic) not in Iran, I would say that mockery is a precondition for an inclusive society. There is also a difference between acts of racism like burning the koran in an attempt to stir civil strife and playful artistic representations or literary works like the Satanic Verses whose author faced a despicable and cruel fatwa which was executed 33 years after being issued. So yes the left should be stronger in denouncing Islamic fundamentalists and mullahs and defending secularism. There can be no tolerance for those who want to cancel identities and people with them. Still there is one aspect which i find particularly irritating: the false equivalence made by far rightists invoking free speech: Their argument being that global elites (Elon Musk excluded) are guilty of double standards in advocating artistic freedom while censoring the views of bigots, incels, homophobes and racists. This just exposes the nature of a totalitarian project; which boils down to a normalisation of hate and a marginalisation of critical and academic inquiry as well as sheer humour. And while they lash at some global liberal conspiracy their greatest advocate is Elon Musk, a symbol of predatory capitalism and the normalisation of bigotry in the social media. Of course not all those taking offence belong to the latter camp, and most probably some catholic leaders even speak up out of fear that the far right will outflank them. For once again the far right is usurping Christian symbols to deploy as weapons in their bid to impose a new order. They may well end up using the cross as their new swastika in promoting a nationalist ideology which is so alien to christian universalism. Still Catholic leaders who rushed to condemn this representation are once again losing an opportunity; that of rising above puerile culture wars, and show the self confidence of people who can take irony and ridicule while focusing on the existential threats facing humanity. But this brings me to another reflection, why is a presumed representation of a last supper (depicted in all kinds of bizarre ways on t-shirts, posters, and adverts) which includes a drag queen offensive in the first place? Does this in itself suggest that some bodies are less equal and more offensive than others? For ultimately what irks them is the visibility of bodies which defy their ideology. They want to turn back the clock to a time when certain bodies lived out of sight.

magic and loss

 

How to beat the far right

There are elections which can define the course of history. The second round of the French election on Sunday is one of these.

Faced with the prospect of a far right government in France, the logical choice for all democratic forces is to withdraw third placed candidates which could stand in the way of a victory over the far right.

In the short term this is the only possible way to stop the far right from winning. The 'popular front' including Melenchon have already declared that they are withdrawing in constituencies where centrists are in a better place to beat the far right. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who distinguishes between the enemy (RN) and the adversary (the left ) has hinted doing in those constituencies where the left is in a better place to beat the far right. But regrettably some in the president's camp take exception with France Insoumise candidates in a false equivalence which betrays the legacy of the second world war.

Even during the cold war centre right republicans used to vote for communists (and vice versa) when facing Jean Marie Le Pen's FN.

But while commendable this strategy worked in a context where the far right was more of a nuisance than a real threat.

To beat the far right as a project of government, the centre and the left have to converge around a synthesis which remains elusive but has become a necessity not just in France but even in the US.

The reality is that as things stand neither the centre nor the left can beat the far right on their own. But a sheer sum of the parts is also likely to be dismissed as a marriage of convenience by voters (this reminds me of Prodi's alliance in Italy which stretched from the centre-right to the far left but which imploded after a few months in power). Moreover voters across the world tend to vote for something they can believe in and not simply to block the path of others.

One mistake committed by the centrists is that they can keep on embracing the same policies while hoping that left wing voters have no alternative but to back them against the far right. Macron failed miserably in this with the Popular Front emerging as the main contender against the far right. In next Sunday's election the first line of defence against the far right is the left.

But the left often makes the mistaken assumption that by going back to its roots (whatever that means) it can become the natural choice of those who vote fascists cause they have been left behind. In reality it was under Jeremy Corbyn that Labour lost the so-called 'red wall' in its northern heartlands.

It is time to take a look back at history. Cause what is happening now comes with a sense of deja vu.

Some dismiss the urgency of stopping the far right simply because it bears little resemblance to the brown or black shirts.

But while expecting the Nazi zombies to creep back from their sordid graves is far fetched and unrealistic, let's not forget that it was moderate voters and mainstream conservatives who put in Hitler, Mussolini and Pinochet in power. The Nazis were not alien predators who descended on the planet. They were crafty politicians who plotted alliances with conservative forces to win power, often by respecting (and bending) the constitutional rules. Mussolini retained the monarchy and Hitler won power in coalition with conservative parties while serving under President Hindenburg. They also kept power through mixture of fear and consent. Secondly they did so incrementally moving the goalposts as they consolidated their power.

Neither i am not comparing Bardella, Le Pen or Trump to Hitler. None of them advocate the elimination of entire ethnic groups and in a reflection of our times they are more islamophobic than anti semitic. Today you can be fascist who supports Israel for all the wrong reasons. But they have also invested a lot in a climate against immigrants and have contributed to a climate of intolerance.

Moreover talk of about ' the national preference', a roll back of climate policies and taking away citizenship rights of children represent a real threat to our way of life and our existence.

Another mistake committed by some analysts is to view the modern far right as some kind of populist anti elitist movement legitimised by democratic elections.  The reality is that Nazism and fascism were also an expression of a similar sentiment. The railed against jewish elites and ranted against intellectuals.  Of course in power they not only eliminated inconvenient trade unions but provided capitalism with slave labour. But right to the end they projected themselves as tribunes of the masses.  And just as today, their rise in the 1920s and 1930s seemed unstoppable.  They managed to shape popular common sense.  The far right project today is also incremental, weakening Europe and democratic institutions from within.

Yet they were stopped and beaten.  And we also owe that to the rise of mass democratic movements (namely christian democracy, social democracy and euro-communism).  Our Europe was born out of a compromise which saw most of the left accepting liberal democratic norms and the centre endorsing active state intervention and the welfare state.  It was an imperfect compromise but one which emancipated millions of people.

The historic lesson is that the far right can be beaten by popular mobilisation and a counter hegemony which shifts the political centre to the left.

So to get serious about the far right threat, the left has to push the centre to ditch its love affair with neo-liberalism and austerity. But to get there the left must ditch its hobby of denigrating the 'west' even when facing authoritarian powers like Russia, China and Iran... The left also has to reclaim the sort of civic patriotism rooted in the jacobin tradition and the partisan resistance. It must reclaim its historic role in the front lines of defending the legacy of 1789 and 1848.

It is time for an inclusive and assertive republicanism which takes pride in the conquests of the past but is ready to address the challenges of the future. A bold left which does not shun public ownership in the energy and transport sectors, which aggressively demands a global tax on corporations and crucially embark on a project of renewal which offers a better and more prosperous life by investing in job creation and saving the planet. It should also stand for the defence of democracy from its detractors, including aggressive imperialists like Putin.

It has to offer hope in a future where people have greater control over their daily existence, where poverty is abolished and where technology and AI are socialised with the aim of shortening the working week. But ultimately all this depends on protecting humanity from the ravages of climate catastrophe. It would be simply irresponsible for democratic forces to wage war against each other while the planet is burning. The stakes have never been higher.