Does this mean the Indigenous people can go back to Human sacrifice and cannibalism?
Now let's not paint our pre-Columbian American natives (both hemispheres) with such a negative brush. You make them sound like savages. We all know that life in the Americas was like heaven for all its natives before Columbus and his ilk arrived (sarc). God help us for introducing stone age people to western civilization & Christianity. God forgive us (sarc)!
Okay, who's next up for human sacrifice?
For bringing Christianity to the natives and ending the mass human sacrifices of the Aztecs and Mayans and the oppression of imperial conquests by them and the Incas? Or maybe for the rapine, cruelty, and exploitation of Catholic Spaniards toward the natives as conquistadores and as their ruling class?
Considering that at the time, in Europe and everywhere else, ordinary people were exploited by the ruling classes of their day, perhaps the Holy Father was apologizing that the Catholic Church and Spaniards then were not yet of modern sensibilities, culturally sensitive toward natives and modest about the claims of the faith -- except when it comes to secular issues like global warming and free market economics.
In my lifetime, I have been disappointed at times in the pope, but this is the first one I have seen who seems like a vain fool at his core, flamboyant in his modesty and immodest in his claims. Most dangerously, the Pope risks unravelling the Catholic Church's sense of legitimacy through his denunciations of the past and of the way that large swaths of the Christian faithful live.
I wonder if, for the sake of consistency, Pope Francis will renounce the Vatican's investments, shutter its businesses, and decline contributions from the faithful in capitalist countries? Probably not, because without the majesty of the Vatican, Francis would be as he was, a little known cardinal of odd views.
Best post of the thread!