"Sexist Man Alive 2021": Pope Francis!

There are many good things to say about this pope. When the Italian-born Argentinean moved into the Vatican in 2013, he did not make himself at home in the pope's magnificent chambers, but took up residence in the guest house. He wears no red leather shoes and no baroque embroidered stoles, but sandals and the simple white papal cassock. He demonstratively renounces pomp and seeks the closeness of the people. And he uses his authority to criticize capitalism, to speak up against racism and to save the climate ("We are the guardians, not the masters of the world").

Really a pity that there are other sides. Completely different ones. And not only in matters of detail, but in the core. Because: This pope is also the head of an apartheid system in which women are second-class people. Based solely on their biological sex, they are the servants of the pious masters, scrubbing the church floors. They are not allowed to administer the sacraments and denied the ordination to the priesthood, which means: deterred from an independent access to God. This access leads exclusively over the pious masters.

Even in the 21st century, the Vatican is at the head of the oldest, most hermetic male federation in this world. In which, not accidental, men who love men feel particularly comfortable. And this pope makes sure that it goes on and on. With the contempt for women, concealed in idealization. And with the sexual violence, long ignored.

This pope not only does not fight the epidemic, structural abuse of children and adolescents (not to mention women), he also protects perpetrators and accomplices. In France alone, there have been more than 300,000 victims and about 3,000 perpetrators since the 1950s. Yet it is not he who has intervened, at least in the 21st century, but the rank and file who have had to force His Holiness to do so.

This pope snubs the countless committed Catholic women around the world who have been fighting for decades for the right to become priests or at least deacons. He patronizingly tells them, "Such reductionism (as the demand for the priesthood also for women, ed.) would lead us to believe that women would be granted status in the Church and greater participation only if they were admitted to holy orders." And further, that would "also subtly lead to an impoverishment of their indispensable contribution." All right, Holy Father. We are happy to continue working for Mother Church, diligently and anonymously - with no say, no power, no pay. We women are so used to it.

This pope is also not trying to mitigate the systemic conflict over abortion, but is bringing it to a head. He is becoming the supreme agitator against the desperate, unintentionally pregnant women and those who stand by them.

Thus, on October 10, 2018, in his general audience in St. Peter's Square, the Pope declared that "the evil in the world" stems from the "disregard for life."

Evil? Sure, abortion. A "self-contradictory way of thinking" nowadays even allows abortion "in the name of protecting other rights," he complained. Which rights? Ours, of course. Because "you can't end a human life, even a small one, to solve a problem. That's like paying a killer to solve a problem." Did we get that right? Abortive women are hired killers!

That, Holy Father, is simply the last straw! Enough is enough!

Enough with the paternalism of half of humanity. "God loves life," you say in the same breath. What a cynicism. You should know that, according to UN statistics, 47,000 women in the world die every year after illegal abortions, and hundreds of thousands more are physically damaged or even infertile for life. You are centrally responsible for these illegal abortions. It starts with your demonization of contraception.

Two out of three women who have an abortion are already mothers; in many parts of the world, often mothers of a large flock of children whom they can barely feed. And you dare to accuse these women and us Europeans of having abortions because we let ourselves be seduced by "money, power and success"!

But if we take a closer look at your image of women, this is not surprising at all. Because women are not full human beings for you, they are subhumans. Behind your idealization of the Mother of God is the naked phobia of women. Your sermon for the "Solemnity of Our Lady" on January 1, 2021, for example, is a document of gender apartheid. Would you speak so patronizingly and condescendingly about blacks or Jews - an outcry of indignation would go through the world.

For the core of your thinking is contempt for women. We are the "others", we are not equal, but only "equivalent". What that means is defined by you, the men. This is how discrimination against a certain group of people always starts: Some people make them the "others."

In this sermon, you refer to women as "the noblest flesh in the world" that "conceived us and gave birth to us." But today, unfortunately, motherhood would be humiliated "because the only growth that interests is economic growth." In short, you play off the critique of capitalism against women's emancipation. And you insist: "It is inherent to women to take care of life. Women show that the meaning of life is not to keep on producing something, but to care for what is already there."

For a man, you seem to know amazingly well what the task of a "woman" is. But how would it be if the men, above all the church men, would also start saving the world and protecting life? Nurturing and protecting, instead of abusing and leaving alone; washing and ironing, instead of preaching self-righteousness and misogyny from the pulpit in their freshly starched vestments.

Holy Father, not only feminists like EMMA and Maria 2.0 find your image of women is out of date and shocking. Women all over the world are revolting against it. For example, no one aborts as often as Catholic women. Simply because - thanks to your ignorance of sexual violence and demonization of pleasure and contraception - they most often become pregnant unintentionally. A woman who does not want or cannot have a child, is going to have an abortion. No matter what she believes.

When you took office eight years ago, you were associated with the hope of reform and more humanity. You have deceived us.

Instead, to make matters worse, you are now propagating exorcism. Back in 2014, you welcomed the founding of the "International Association of Devil Exorcists" because: "The devil exists even in the 21st century. And we need to learn from the Bible how to fight him."

During these exorcisms, priests sprinkle holy water on the "obsessed" and murmur prayers. It can happen that such a victim dies. Like the German pedagogy student Anneliese Michel in 1976. She weighed only 31 kilos after 67 exorcisms within two months.

Today, not least thanks to your propaganda, there are more than 200 exorcists working in Italy alone, and around 300 in Poland. And the archdiocese of Cologne has an official exorcism commissioner, Prelate Helmut Moll. Cologne? That should ring a bell in your papal ears. Covered up abuse cases. Massive departures from the church by the faithful. Rebellious women.

Unjustly honored Pope Francis, it can now no longer surprise you if we come to the following conclusion: Because of your guilt, your guilt, your great guilt, we have come to the conclusion that hardly anyone in the Christian world bears as much responsibility for the misery of women and children as you do. You have therefore more than deserved the title "The Sexist Man Alive".

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com ***

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