Francis Of The Filth Book Pdf

[Germain Aguilera]

Argentinepresidential candidate Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza political coalition holds a placard depicting a dollar bill with his face on it during a campaign rally in La Plata, Argentina, Sept. 12, 2023. Milei won the presidential run-off Nov. 19. He has derided Pope Francis as "filthy leftist," though some weeks ahead of the election, he softened his tone to win more centrist voters, according to analysts. (OSV New photo/Agustin Marcarian, Reuters)

"We are pleased to announce that His Holiness, Pope Francis, spoke with our future president to congratulate him and to express his wishes for the unity and progress for our country," Milei's office said in a statement.

Upstart presidential candidate Milei, who attacked Pope Francis as a "filthy leftist," overwhelmingly won Argentina's presidential election on a radical libertarian platform of dollarizing the economy and shrinking the state in a country beset by recurring economic crises and triple-digit inflation.

An economist and congressman, Milei claimed 55% of the vote in the Nov. 19 election, besting Economy Minister Sergio Massa of the ruling Peronist coalition. Milei won all but three of Argentina's 23 provinces (winning Buenos Aires autonomous city and narrowly losing Buenos Aires province).

An eccentric figure with an unruly mop of hair, Wolverine sideburns and a vituperative speaking style, Milei has promised to scrap the Argentine peso for the U.S. dollar to curb inflation of more than 140%, eliminate eight of 18 government ministries, "burn down" the Central Bank and only pursue relations with what he considers free nations.

"Massa's campaign of fear fell flat as the dire state of the economy under his watch hobbled any chance he had to win the presidency. 'It's the economy stupid,' still applies," Nicols Saldas, senior analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told OSV News.

The Peronist campaign revved up a well-oiled machine: implementing tax holidays and increasing subsidies, delivered Massa a six-point victory in the first round Oct. 22. But voters for the center-right candidate Patricia Bullrich, who finished third and didn't make the runoff, followed her lead and broke for Milei.

It also portends challenges for church-state relations. Milei has maligned Francis, a fellow Argentine, as a "malignant presence on earth," while a campaign surrogate spoke of severing relations with the Vatican.

On Nov. 21, the Argentine newspaper La Nacion reported that Milei had "received a surprising phone" that afternoon from Francis, who "contacted him from the Vatican, in a gesture that marks the beginning of their personal relationship." Based on sources from La Libertad Avanza, a political coalition, La Nacion said the president-elect invited the pope to visit Argentina, "both on a state visit, as well as in his capacity as a leader of Catholicism and a clergyman."

The Argentine bishops' conference formally congratulated Milei in a brief statement released Nov. 21. A day earlier, Bishop Oscar Ojea of San Isidro, president of the conference, posted on X : "We value yesterday's democratic day and we pray to the Lord to enlighten the new elected authorities so that they may work for the common good of our people."

"The relationship can get on track if the more moderate style that Milei is showing in his recent appearances persists. It's likely, however, that as the social crisis deepens, differences will remain," he said.

"He's a person that wants to destroy the state," said Fr. Roberto Ferrari, a priest working with the poor in the Diocese of San Isidro, which covers suburban Buenos Aires. "He wants to be head of state to destroy the state."

VATICAN CITY In a sweeping environmental manifesto aimed at spurring action, Pope Francis called Thursday for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he said was a "structurally perverse" economic system in which the rich exploited the poor, turning Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

Francis framed climate change as an urgent moral crisis to address in his eagerly anticipated encyclical, blaming global warming on an unfair, fossil fuel-based industrial model that harms the poor the most.

The document released Thursday was a stinging indictment of big business and climate doubters, and aimed to inspire courageous decisions at U.N. climate negotiations this year as well as in domestic politics and everyday life. Citing Scripture and his predecessors, the pope urged people of every faith and even no faith to undergo an awakening to save God's creation.

"It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress," the pope wrote. "Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress."

Environmental scientists said the first-ever encyclical, or teaching document, on the environment could have a dramatic effect on the climate debate, lending the moral authority of the immensely popular Francis to an issue that has long been cast in purely political, economic or scientific terms.

"This clarion call should guide the world toward a strong and durable universal climate agreement in Paris at the end of this year," said Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s top climate official. "Coupled with the economic imperative, the moral imperative leaves no doubt that we must act on climate change now."

Scientific data on Thursday backed up Francis' concerns. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released figures showing that last month was the hottest May around the globe in 136 years of global records. In addition, the first five months of 2015 made up by far the hottest year on record, with very real effects: some 2,200 people have died in India's heat wave.

"The simple reality is that energy is the essential building block of the modern world," said Thomas Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research, a conservative free-market group. "The application of affordable energy makes everything we do - food production, manufacturing, health care, transportation, heating and air conditioning - better."

Francis said he hoped his paper would lead both ordinary people in their daily lives and decision-makers at the Paris U.N. climate meetings to a wholesale change of mind and heart, urging all to listen to "both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor."

"This vision of 'might is right' has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all," he wrote. "Completely at odds with this model are the ideals of harmony, justice, fraternity and peace as proposed by Jesus."

The timing of the encyclical was intentional: Nations across the world will meet in Paris at the end of the year to try to come up with a binding agreement to reduce heat-trapping gases. Some experts say it could be Earth's last chance to avoid a milestone of dangerous global warming: Another 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming from now (2 degrees Fahrenheit).

It's a blunt, readable booklet full of zingers by the Argentine "slum pope" that will make many conservatives and climate doubters squirm, including in the U.S. Congress where Francis will deliver the first-ever papal address in September.

"There are certain things that science will never be able to say so beautifully," he said. "I think it speaks across the spectrum of human experiences ... It speaks to the soul and the inner part of us."

But the leading skeptic in the U.S. Congress, Republican Sen. James Inhofe, said he feared the encyclical will be used by "alarmists" to push policies that will lead to big tax increases. He said the poor will actually "carry the heaviest burden" of policies to phase out fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

Citing the deforestation of the Amazon, the melting of Arctic glaciers and the deaths of coral reefs, he rebuked "obstructionist" climate doubters who "seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms." And he blamed politicians for listening more to oil industry interests than Scripture, common sense or the cries of the poor.

He praised a "less is more" lifestyle, one that shuns air conditioners and gated communities in favor of car pools, recycling and being in close touch with the marginalized. He called for courageous, radical and farsighted policies to transition the world's energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, saying mitigation schemes like the buying and selling of carbon credits won't solve the problem and are just a "ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors."

"Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur," Francis wrote.

Catholic Republican presidential candidates said they don't necessarily agree with the pope when it comes to coping with climate change and that he shouldn't be getting involved in it in the first place.

"I don't think we should politicize our faith," U.S. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert, said on the eve of the encyclical's release. "I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm."

"Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth," he wrote.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, whose office wrote the first draft of the encyclical, acknowledged that the pope was no expert in science but said Francis had consulted widely and was fully justified in speaking out about an important issue.

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