Pope's New Year's Message: Dump Life's 'Useless Baggage'

Jan. 1 isn't just New Year's Day for the Roman Catholic Church. It's also the World Day of Peace, and Pope Francis used the occasion Monday to remind 40,000 congregants at St. Peter's Square about the plight of one of the world's "weakest and most needy" populations, per Reuters and CNN. "Please do not extinguish the hope in their hearts," the pontiff said of migrants and refugees looking for safe havens, adding "for this peace, to which everyone has a right, many of them are willing to risk their lives in a journey which is often long and dangerous." In an earlier Mass, per the Washington Post, Francis recommended dumping the "useless baggage" of life and reflecting more on God, which will help stop "our freedom from being corroded by the banality of consumerism, the blare of commercials, the stream of empty words, and the overpowering waves of empty chatter and loud shouting."

Francis also issued a warning in recent days on the perils of nuclear war, via a photo showing a Japanese boy in 1945 carrying his dead brother on his back shortly after the Nagasaki bombing, the Independent reports. The Vatican press office started sending around cards featuring the image by Marine photographer Joe O'Donnell, with the Francis-added words "the fruits of war" on the back. The caption under the photo reads: "The young boy's sadness is expressed only in his gesture of biting his lips which are oozing blood." A Vatican analyst says this latest correspondence out of Rome is "consistent with Francis' effort … to speak out against what he describes as a 'Third World War' today, being fought in piecemeal fashion in various parts of the world."

These messages are too simplistic, too petty and too frivolous to address the world's real problems. The headline touting 'migrant hopes' clashes with the modern reality of borders and states and in the context of peace is hypocritical and subversive. It is the flacid, puerile rant of the juvenile to call for others to pick up the burdens people have made for themselves. It is the lie of the Liberals to say that there are no bad people, just bad choices in their quest to erase responsibility. The old saw, 'The Lord helps them that help themselves' is what brings us together. The Pope's short sighted protests only beget resentfulness and envy between those who have made for themselves and those who feel entitled to what they have made.

methink the Pope scared of Donald and Kim

Trump and Jong-un nuclear rantings :angry:

man piss on the poop. if he is really worried about the worlds weakest he would sell the vatican and use the proceeds to set them up to help themselves...

is the vatican dat take the poors wealth in the fus' place. dat is why the poor poor..the chuch take it way from dem....