Pope Francis criticizes West for trying to export ‘its own type of democracy’

 

A priest surveys the damage caused by ISIS at a Catholic Church in Karamles, Iraq. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Stephen Rasche

CNA Staff, Oct 23, 2023 / 08:45 am (CNA).

Pope Francis cited the examples of Western intervention in Libya and Iraq in arguing that the West should not “export” its own “type of democracy” to other countries, according to a recently published interview.

The pope’s comments were published in the Italian newspaper La Stampa and excerpted from a book released this week by journalists Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin, “You Are Not Alone: Challenges, Answers, Hopes.”

In an excerpt from the book, the pope was asked by the authors about “the responsibilities of the most developed countries” for the “chaos” being experienced by other nations.

Francis responded that that chaos was due in part to “the failure of the West in its attempt to import its own type of democracy” in some countries around the world.

“We are thinking of Libya, which seems to be led only by very strong personalities such as Gaddafi,” the pope said. “A Libyan told me that they once had only one Gaddafi, while now they have 53.”

The Holy Father similarly pointed to the Iraq War, which he called “a real disgrace” and “one of the worst cruelties.” U.S.-led forces defeated the Iraqi military and deposed president Saddam Hussein, leaving in his place a country strained by worsened sectarian violence.

“Saddam Hussein was certainly not a little angel, on the contrary,” Francis said, “but Iraq was a fairly stable country.”

The pontiff cautioned that he was “not defending Gadaffi or Hussein.” But, he argued, “organized anarchy and other war” followed those conflicts.

“I therefore believe that we must not export our democracy to other countries, but help them to develop a process of democratic maturation according to their characteristics,” Francis said. “Do not wage a war to import a democracy that their peoples are unable to assimilate.”

The pope pointed out that some countries, such as monarchies, “will probably never accept a democracy,” but nations “can help to ensure that there is more participation” in those instances.

The pope confessed himself “ignorant in terms of international politics,” though he said the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) indicates “an unfortunate Western choice.”

Ambrogetti is an Italian-born journalist, while Rubin is from Argentina; the two previously collaborated on the 2014 book “Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words.” Rubin has also authored a biography of Francis.


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4 Comments

  1. The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within. Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism. True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village – Mahatma Gandhi

  2. The pope confessed himself “ignorant in terms of international politics,” though he said the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) indicates “an unfortunate Western choice.”

    The rise of Islam is now Western Civ’s fault?!? The pope is woke! We ought not be shocked to next see Francis’ wheelchair amidst the anti-Israel pro-Hamas protestors, proclaiming the holy spirit of Islam.

  3. We read: “The pope confessed himself ‘ignorant in terms of international politics,’ though he said the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) indicates ‘an unfortunate Western choice’.” Four points:

    FIRST, it gets worse! But to begin, this from Gaudium et Spes: “The Church guards the heritage of God’s Word and draws from it religious and moral principles, without always having at hand the solution to particular problems” (n.33). This is why the Church retains/invites/teaches (?) attention to the COMMON GOOD, rather than favoring more temporal forms of government. In communally divided societies (most post-colonial regions now fitted into arbitrary “state” boundaries), tensions easily erupt across races, languages, religions, clans, tribes, castes, new elites, and whatever.

    The case is even made that if anti-Catholic sentiments had not prevailed amongst the deal makers (David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson), a retained multinational-state (!) or Austro-Hungarian Federation (not an Empire) could have averted the power vacuum in central Europe that invited aggression from both the fascist north and communist Russia from the east. World War II. In general, eastern Europe resembles the complex human condition shared with post-colonial states, more so than do the more anomalist and homogeneous “societies” assumed by Western sociologists and political “scientists”—and readily soaked up by secularist minds.

    SECOND, now, as to things “being worse” than Pope Francis opines….there are other forms of governance in other contexts, that are also bargained away by ideological pygmies in high places. The form of the “apostolic” Catholic Church, for example, is a “hierarchical communion” (Vatican I, with Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium) in service to the baptized—who certainly can be consulted especially with respect to the secular realm, but who are not sacramentally ordained bishops in the ecclesial realm. (In comparison, the form and self-identity of Islam—with the fused mosque & state—is as a sectarian [“polyhedral”?] collage, or a “congregational theocracy” quite capable of encompassing even ISIS which the pope mentions—and now Hamas which is totally diabolical.)

    THIRD, so now, likely to dislocate the Church from within, we see a cut-and-paste Synod on Synodality which (con)fuses the apostolic succession with the vast majority of baptized who are not “sent” as are the Successors of the Apostles (“apostello”)—that is, not “aggregated, compiled and synthesized”) and who are not with the same personal responsibility and accountability for the gifted (not constructed) Deposit of Faith, under the gaze of the incarnate Christ Jesus with the Father on Judgement Day, and even now. This isn’t 1789, or is it?

    FOURTH, to this observer, the synodal “mess” (now even “welcoming” the German “non-synod” (!) and smiley-button Fr. James Martin & Co.) looks a lot like the political mess, in international politics, that Pope Francis correctly decries, and attributes to everyone except himself and his lieutenants. Not only forgivably ignorant of international politics (that’s not his calling nor the mission of the Church), but quite willing to dismiss his constructive interlocutors as “backwardist.” Just as in the tripwire post-colonial world: forward, ever forward!

  4. Credit must be given where it is due. Pope Francis is exactly right on the disastrous impact of the immoral and stupid US wars against Iraq and Libya. Whether the West was really trying to “export democracy” or something else was at work is another question.

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