Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer explained that Pope Francis’s views were formed under Latin America’s liberation theology movement, which relies heavily on Marxist concepts in an attempt to help the poor.
Krauthammer said, “As for the pope speaking for a universal religion, you forget that he is a real man from a real context, and that is Argentina which was…spectacularly unsuccessful economically over the last one hundred years. It started in the 1900’s, roughly where the United States was. We became the greatest economic power. It became a basket case. And the reason was—the capitalism practiced in Latin America, but particularly Argentina especially, was a corrupt crony capitalism that was a disaster.”
He continued, “Now out of that, in all of Latin America, there developed in the ‘60s and ‘70s what was called liberation theology. Strongly anti-capitalist and quite leftist. By the way, a lot of the bishops, John Paul, resisted that and he tried not to appoint bishops and cardinals of that persuasion. But, nonetheless, it’s a powerful movement of which I suspect the pope—he was at least sympathetic in his days in Argentina. And he carried that into the Vatican.”
“So it’s completely understandable that he would complete and repeat and amplify the anti-capitalist message. It’s not that he is anti-American. And it’s not that I think he is in any way against the kind of Democratic Capitalism that we have in the West. it’s just that that is the language and the ideology that he inherited. I think it is unfortunate because the moral power he carries can be translated into an ideological message. And the ultimate irony is that if you adopt a liberation theology, economics, the ones who suffer the most as in Argentina are the poor,” he added.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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