On December 1, Simon & Schuster is releasing a new book by Pope Francis, with Austen Ivereigh. The book, titled Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, is a series of interview questions given to Pope Francis by British biographer Austen Ivereigh. The interviews cover a wide range of issues, including the death of George Floyd; clerical sexual abuse; historical revisionism by toppling statues; protests against government coronavirus restrictions; persecuted minorities such as Christians, Yazidi, Rohingya, and Uighurs; migrants and refugees; and abortion, according to Crux.
Many feel Pope Francis has already revealed himself to be a globalist in many ways, including with his support of the Great Reset, Black Lives Matter, socialism, same-sex civil unions, and radical environmentalism. Excepts shared of the book show that Pope Francis continues his leftward trajectory as he gives his reflections on the change needed to build a “post-Covid world.”
For the first time, Pope Francis recognizes the Uighurs’ persecution in one chapter of the book, saying: “I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi.”
He goes on to say that not only are individuals tested by a crisis such as the COVID-19, but whole societies and governments. Regarding the COVID crisis, he asks:
What matters more: to take care of people or keep the financial system going? Do we look after people or sacrifice them for the sake of the stock market? Do we put the machinery of wealth on hold, knowing people will suffer, yet that way we save lives?…
This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of….
Let us dare to dream. God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need to slow down, take stock, and design better ways of living together on this earth.
Another topic reveals how the Pope feels about racial justice, as he compliments the George Floyd protestors:
To know ourselves as a people is to be aware of something greater that unites us, something that cannot be reduced to a shared legal or physical identity. We saw this in the protests in reaction to the killing of George Floyd, when many people who otherwise did not know each other took to the streets to protest, united by a healthy indignation.
He then describes those who protest against the government-mandated lockdowns as being “victims only in their own imagination: those who claim, for example, that being forced to wear a mask is an unwarranted imposition by the state, yet who forget or do not care about those who cannot rely, for example, on social security or who have lost their jobs.”
The Pope continued:
Some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!
You’ll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education or because there are whole families who have lost their income. You won’t find them protesting that the astonishing amounts spent on the arms trade could be used to feed the whole of the human race and school every child. On such matters, they would never protest; they are incapable of moving outside of their own little world of interests.
Rounding out the book, the Pope gives his view on Universal Basic Income: “I believe it is time to explore concepts like the universal basic income (UBI), also known as ‘the negative income tax’: an unconditional flat payment to all citizens, which could be dispersed through the tax system.”
According to America: The Jesuit Review, the Pope went on to cover “compensating unpaid caretakers and ‘informal workers,’ allowing people to refuse undignified work and thus reshaping labor relations, removing ‘the stigma of welfarism’ and allowing people to combine work with community service.”
The Pope praised the two female economists Mariana Mazzucato and Kate Raworth, saying: “Could it be that in this crisis, the perspective women bring is what the world needs at this time to face the coming challenges?”
TNA readers may recall that Mariana Mazzucato is the University College London economics professor and United Nations and European government advisor who wrote the article “Avoiding a Climate Lockdown.” In the article, she suggests that the only way to avoid “climate lockdowns,” which are virus lockdowns on steroids, is to have a “radical overhaul of corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems.”
Kate Raworth is the creator of “Donut Economics,” a member of the Club of Rome, and helped create the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Perhaps the most telling sentence available as of yet from the book is a line on the back cover stating, “Sin is the rejection of the limits that love requires.” That could be Pope Francis’ definition of sin, but I am not sure it lines up with the Holy Bible’s definition of it.
