Life Site News gets a pope story wrong. Remnant and Rorate repeat.

t Life Site News, John-Hen­ry West­en was first to pub­lish the claim, on Feb­ru­ary 25. “Pope,” the head­line cries, “calls Italy’s fore­most abor­tion pro­mot­er [Emma Boni­no] one of nation’s ‘for­got­ten greats.’ ” You can find the sto­ry here. This is now the lat­est so-called papal scan­dal; it has been picked up by all the usu­al sus­pect blogs. Even Mike Gen­dron, the anti-Catholic apol­o­gist, wrote an out­raged Face­book post about it; in which he told Catholics to rise up and cry: Enough is enough! the pope should not be con­tra­dict­ing Church teach­ing that way. It attract­ed all sorts of anti-Catholic vit­ri­ol in the com­ments. The Rads and the Trads and the anti-Catholics make strange bed­fel­lows. Even Mr. John Bugay, the polem­i­cal rogue him­self, has a post about it. He cites Rorate Cæli as his infal­li­ble author­i­ty. Mr. Bugay loves the Rads and the Trads; he gets all the infor­ma­tion for his anti-Catholic pro­pa­gan­da from them. I’ve not­ed it oft.

Now, when you word a title in the way LSN does—choosing that par­tic­u­lar detail among any num­ber of oth­ers that might have described Ms. Bonino—a read­er can be excused for con­clud­ing that the pope is indif­fer­ent to the evil of abor­tion; or, that his remarks were made in the con­text of a dis­cus­sion of abor­tion. It is called sub­text: You sug­gest a thing with­out com­ing right out and say­ing it. By no means do I sug­gest it is inten­tion­al. But an out­raged read­er is able to say: What is the pope doing prais­ing some pro-abor­tion fanat­ic? as though that were the very point of the praise. Why include that detail? That is the reac­tion a read­er is going to have; for Mike Gen­dron con­clud­ed the pope is con­tra­dict­ing Church teach­ing, as though he is now pro-abor­tion.

But you—the author of the headline—are then able to employ the noth­ing-oth­er-than-facts defense. That has hap­pened at Life Site News before, with a sto­ry by Hilary White about Pope Fran­cis kiss­ing the hand of a gay priest. The sug­ges­tion was plant­ed in peo­ple’s minds, even if that was not the inten­tion, that the pope winks at the gay agen­da; then, when chal­lenged, LSN (and its apol­o­gists) pro­claimed, “The sto­ry con­tains noth­ing but facts.” LSN print­ed a sort of cor­rec­tion on the post lat­er, but—based on this lat­est article—seem not to have absorbed the les­son.

Mr. West­en’s source was an inter­view with the pope in the Ital­ian press, pub­lished in Cor­riere Del­la Ser­ra. You may find it here. The part of the inter­view in ques­tion is in the next-to-last para­graph.

Now, the inter­view took place on Feb­ru­ary 8 and the Ital­ian paper pub­lished its arti­cle on Feb­ru­ary 12. I note, just for the sake of the accu­ra­cy and com­plete­ness of the record, that a mere six days lat­er, on Feb­ru­ary 18, the pope was trav­el­ing back to Rome from a vis­it to Mex­i­co and gave anoth­er inter­view. Per­haps you have heard of that inter­view; you can find it here. He said some things about Don­ald Trump and Zika: yeah, that one. In the very same inter­view, the pope also had some things to say about abor­tion. He said this:

Abor­tion is not the less­er of two evils. It is a crime. It is to throw some­one out in order to save anoth­er. That’s what the Mafia does. It is a crime, an absolute evil.

A ques­tion occurs to me; maybe it does you too. If on Feb­ru­ary 8, the pope is prais­ing an abortionist—possibly because he is indif­fer­ent to it—how is it that, on Feb­ru­ary 18, he is call­ing abor­tion a “crime” and an “absolute evil” and com­par­ing it to a Mafia hit? Does this make sense to you? What am I miss­ing? Did the pope expe­ri­ence a strong pro-life con­ver­sion in the course of ten days? Does he have a dop­pel­gänger? I only ask ques­tions.

Mr. West­en rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Pope Fran­cis pos­si­bly was not aware of this fact about Emma Boni­no, only to imme­di­ate­ly knock it down:

Luca Volonte, an Ital­ian politi­cian and the pres­i­dent of the pro-life Novae Ter­rae Foun­da­tion, told Life­Site­News he believed the Pope “was not real­ly informed about how much Mrs. Boni­no has done in Italy and at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el to pro­mote abor­tion and euthana­sia.” Even though he admits “she did well in Egypt,” he adds that even there “she pro­mot­ed her anti-life val­ues.” The Pope, said Volonte, “was wrong and worse were the mem­bers of His sec­re­tari­at for not inform­ing him.

The Pope’s pos­si­ble igno­rance of Bonino’s stance is unlike­ly giv­en his jus­ti­fi­ca­tions in the inter­view. She has been for decades the most promi­nent sup­port­er of abor­tion in Italy. More­over, the Pope already received crit­i­cism for his con­tact with Boni­no in 2015 when he called her about her can­cer and invit­ed her to the Vat­i­can.

(So the pope sits down with sin­ners and has com­pas­sion on peo­ple with can­cer. That is not at all what Jesus would have done! “But Alt!” you say. “Why did the pope sin­gle out Ms. Boni­no for this ges­ture? After all, there are many immac­u­late can­cer vic­tims spread across the plan­et who would not defile the pope!” I don’t know; pos­si­bly because the pope is a head of state and Ms. Boni­no was the Ital­ian for­eign min­is­ter from 2013–2014? It is called char­i­ty as well as diplo­ma­cy.)

Any­way, one of the pope’s “justifications”—so-called by Mr. Westen—for prais­ing the shun-wor­thy Ms. Boni­no was that she helped Ital­ians to learn about Africa. In addi­tion, when reporters raised objec­tions to her way of think­ing (pre­sum­ably a ref­er­ence to her pro-abor­tion views), the pope—this is how Mr. West­en tells it—waved such con­cerns away, say­ing, “True, but nev­er mind.”

Hilary White at The Rem­nant also wrote about this inter­view. The pleas­ant title of her arti­cle is “The Pope and the Baby Killer.” She has a dag­ger’s way with words. Here is how she presents that part of the exchange. She is quot­ing the pope: “They say: ‘This is a per­son who thinks very dif­fer­ent­ly from us [Catholics].’ True, but nev­er mind. We have to look at peo­ple, at what they do.”

(Remem­ber that part in bold. That’s impor­tant.)

Ms. White goes on to detail all the hor­rors of Emma Boni­no’s career, fol­low­ing each of them with the sar­cas­tic words: “But nev­er mind, she just thinks dif­fer­ent­ly from us.”

And final­ly, Rorate Cæli (here) describes that part of the inter­view this way: “And before the typ­i­cal syco­phants say he does­n’t know her dis­turb­ing, mur­der­ous his­to­ry, he was asked about just that. The pope’s response? “True, but nev­er mind.”

I know all about Ms. Boni­no’s mur­der­ous his­to­ry, but nev­er mind”: That is what—so we are told in these three arti­cles—the pope said.

So let us, dear read­er, head over to the actu­al source from which all this reportage comes—it is here, you will remember—and look at what it says. First, here is the Ital­ian of the para­graph in ques­tion, where the pope men­tions Emma Boni­no:

Ma negli incon­tri a Casa San­ta Mar­ta insiste con i suoi inter­locu­tori che «l’Europa deve e può cam­biare. Deve e può rifor­mar­si. Se non è in gra­do di aiutare eco­nomi­ca­mente i Pae­si da cui proven­gono i profughi, deve por­si il prob­le­ma di come affrontare ques­ta grande sfi­da che è in pri­mo luo­go uman­i­taria, ma non solo. Si è rot­to un sis­tema educa­ti­vo: quel­lo che trasmet­te­va i val­ori dai non­ni ai nipoti, dai gen­i­tori ai figli. Ebbene, occorre por­si il prob­le­ma di come ricostru­ir­lo». Spes­so, Bergoglio usa una metafo­ra bib­li­ca. Parag­o­na il Vec­chio Con­ti­nente a Sara, la moglie di Abramo. Sara è ster­ile e quan­do ormai ha più di settant’anni, sec­on­do gli usi di quei tem­pi remoti dà in moglie la sua schi­a­va al mar­i­to per­ché par­torisca per lei un figlio. Poi, però, mira­colosa­mente, riesce ad averne uno a novant’anni. «L’Europa», ama ripetere Francesco, «è come Sara, che pri­ma si spaven­ta ma poi sor­ride di nascos­to». La sua sper­an­za, riferisce chi gli ha par­la­to, è che l’Europa «sor­ri­da di nascos­to» agli immi­grati. La forza le può venire dal­la memo­ria dei «gran­di per­son­ag­gi dimen­ti­cati» del­la sua sto­ria recente. Francesco è un ammi­ra­tore dei pro­tag­o­nisti del­la rinasci­ta euro­pea dopo la Sec­on­da guer­ra mon­di­ale. Cita il can­cel­liere tedesco Kon­rad Ade­nauer, il min­istro degli Esteri del­la Fran­cia, Robert Schu­man, l’italiano Alcide De Gasperi. Ma intravede «gran­di dimen­ti­cati» anche nel­la cronaca dei nos­tri giorni. «Ad esem­pio la don­na-sin­da­co di Lampe­dusa, Giusi Nicol­i­ni», per il modo in cui si è spe­sa a favore dei profughi. Ed è soli­to citare «tra i gran­di dell’Italia di oggi» sia il capo del­lo Sta­to emer­i­to, Gior­gio Napoli­tano, che l’ex min­istro Emma Boni­no. «Quan­do Napoli­tano ha accetta­to per la sec­on­da vol­ta, a quell’età, e sebbene per un peri­o­do lim­i­ta­to, di assumer­si un incar­i­co di quel peso, l’ho chiam­a­to e gli ho det­to che era un gesto di “eroic­ità” patri­ot­ti­ca». Quan­to alla Boni­no, a inter­locu­tori che stra­buz­zano gli occhi sen­ten­do citare l’esponente rad­i­cale, sostiene che «è la per­sona che conosce meglio l’Africa. E ha offer­to il miglior servizio all’Italia per conoscere l’Africa. Mi dicono: è gente che la pen­sa in modo molto diver­so da noi. Vero, ma pazien­za. Bisogna guardare alle per­sone, a quel­lo che fan­no».

And here is an Eng­lish trans­la­tion, which comes from Google Trans­late. (Note: I have cleaned up the word­ing and syn­tax of the pas­sage for the sake of clar­i­ty, and with the occa­sion­al help of an online Ital­ian-Eng­lish dic­tio­nary.)

But in meet­ings at Casa San­ta Mar­ta [the pope] insists, to those who speak with him, that “Europe must and can change. It can and must reform itself. If it is unable to give finan­cial help to the coun­tries from which refugees come, the it must face the prob­lem of how to address this great chal­lenge that is in the first place human­i­tar­i­an, but not just human­i­tar­i­an.

I stop here to point out that the con­text of this pas­sage is a dis­cus­sion of assis­tance to refugees. Mr. West­en, Ms. White, and Rorate do not men­tion this, so I do.

I con­tin­ue with the trans­la­tion:

“An edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is bro­ken: the one that trans­mits val­ues ​​from grand­par­ents to grand­chil­dren, from par­ents to chil­dren. It is appro­pri­ate to con­sid­er the prob­lem of how to rebuild this sys­tem.” Often Bergoglio uses a bib­li­cal metaphor. He com­pares the Old Con­ti­nent to Sarah, Abra­ham’s wife. Sarah is bar­ren, and when more than sev­en­ty years have passed, then, accord­ing to the cus­tom of those ancient times, a wife per­mits her hus­band to lie with a slave so she may give birth to a son. But then, mirac­u­lous­ly, Sarah man­ages to con­ceive at nine­ty years of age. “Europe,” Fran­cis likes to say, “is like Sarah, who first gets scared but then smiles secret­ly.”

“Smiles secret­ly” is a ref­er­ence to Gen. 18:12, where the 90-year-old Sarah laughs at the news, from an angel, that she will con­ceive a child.

We read on:

His hope, he says to those those who speak with him, is that Europe will “smile secret­ly” upon its immi­grants.

Once more, I pause to point out that the pope is talk­ing about immi­gra­tion. He is talk­ing about assis­tance to refugees. No one else points this con­text out, so I do. It is the very con­text in which any praise he has for Ms. Boni­no will come.

But I return:

Great­ness [i.e., Europe’s future great­ness] can only come from the mem­o­ry of the “great for­got­ten fig­ures” of Europe’s recent his­to­ry. Fran­cis is an admir­er of the pro­tag­o­nists of the Euro­pean renais­sance after the Sec­ond World War. He names the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Kon­rad Ade­nauer, For­eign Min­is­ter of France, Robert Schu­man, the Ital­ian Alcide De Gasperi. But he sees sim­i­lar “great for­got­ten” pro­tag­o­nists even in recent his­to­ry. For exam­ple, the may­or of Lampe­dusa, Giusi Nicol­i­ni, “for the way you are spend­ing for refugees.” And he also names, “among the greats of today’s Italy,” the for­mer Head of State Gior­gio Napoli­tano, and for­mer for­eign min­is­ter Emma Boni­no.

Now, it is true that Emma Boni­no is an abor­tion advo­cate, and that she assist­ed at numer­ous ille­gal abor­tions, includ­ing with the use of a bicy­cle pump—in the 1970s, at any rate. But she was also the Ital­ian for­eign min­is­ter from 2013–2014, dur­ing the very years Fran­cis has been at the Vat­i­can. And it is in rela­tion to some of her efforts as a for­eign min­is­ter that the pope has praise for her. We will see present­ly what those are.

But I go on:

When Napoli­tano accept­ed for the sec­ond time, although for a lim­it­ed peri­od, to take an assign­ment of that weight, I called him and told him that it was a ges­ture of “hero­ic patri­o­tism.” As for Boni­no, in response to those who were suprised he would men­tion the Rad­i­cal leader [“Rad­i­cal” here is noth­ing more than a ref­er­ence to the name of her polit­i­cal par­ty, the Ital­ian Rad­i­cals], he argues that “she is the per­son who knows Africa the best. She has offered a great ser­vice to Italy to learn about Africa.

So the pope says he prais­es Ms. Boni­no for her work in pro­mot­ing cul­tur­al under­stand­ing between Ital­ians and Africans. It is no dif­fer­ent than if the pope had said, “It is good of Ms. Pelosi to pro­mote a path to full cit­i­zen­ship for Mex­i­cans.” Abor­tion has not a thing to do with it.

It would have been more truth­ful of LSN to write a head­line such as “Pope prais­es Emma Boni­no, advo­cate for refugees.” But such truths do not bait the clicks of LSN read­ers. So instead, LSN choos­es a detail about Ms. Boni­no that has not a thing to do with the sub­ject of the pope’s remarks or the rea­son he felt she should have some praise spo­ken about her. As it is, Mr. West­en makes a scan­dal of a non-sto­ry; no one knows what efforts the pope has or has not made to lead her to Christ or to speak pri­vate­ly with her about abor­tion. His pub­lic wit­ness on that top­ic has always been clear, as in his inter­view on the flight back from Mex­i­co (to cite just one of many exam­ples). The pope need not pause to con­demn abor­tion before say­ing some­thing nice about Ms. Boni­no. He hard­ly needs to prove his pro-life bona fides.

It would be just as accu­rate if Mr. West­en had said, “Pope prais­es writ­ing of known adul­ter­er Charles Dick­ens.” This is obvi­ous­ly sil­ly; no one would think that the pope’s praise for Dick­ens the writer implied that he approved of Dick­ens the adul­ter­er. And so too, nei­ther should the pope’s praise of Emma Boni­no the for­eign min­is­ter who pro­mot­ed under­stand­ing of Africa imply that he is indif­fer­ent to her views on abor­tion. It’s a dis­hon­est infer­ence. Praise and kind­ness may in fact draw her to the light.

But before I close out the trans­la­tion, I recall your mind to the spe­cif­ic claim that Pope Fran­cis was actu­al­ly dis­mis­sive of Boni­no’s mur­der­ous record. The Rads and the Trads claim the pope said, “That is true, but nev­er mind about that.” But here, dear read­er, is what that pas­sage actu­al­ly says:

As for Boni­no, in response to those who were suprised he would men­tion the Rad­i­cal leader, he argues that “she is the per­son who knows Africa the best. She has offered a great ser­vice to Italy to learn about Africa. They say: those peo­ple think very dif­fer­ent­ly than we do. True, but nev­er mind. We have to look at peo­ple, at what they do.

Those peo­ple think dif­fer­ent­ly than we do, but nev­er mind. The Ital­ian word in ques­tion is “gente” (“è gente che la pen­sa in modo molto diver­so da noi”). “Gente” is plur­al. It does not mean “this per­son” (as Hilary White trans­lates it) but “those peo­ple.” In Ital­ian, if you want­ed to say “per­son,” sin­gu­lar, you would use the word “per­sona.” (See here and here.) This is impor­tant because there are two pos­si­ble antecedents for “gente”: Ms. Boni­no, or Africans. But “gente” is plur­al, so it can only be a ref­er­ence to Africans.

Those peo­ple think dif­fer­ent­ly than we do: The pope is not talk­ing about Ms. Boni­no, or her sup­port for abor­tion, but about Africans. He is respond­ing to the objec­tion that we don’t want a bunch of African refugees over­run­ning Italy; they are not like us! (And the word “pazien­za,” trans­lat­ed “nev­er mind,” is just as eas­i­ly trans­lat­ed “have patience,” mean­ing: be patient with their dif­fer­ences.)

Now, Mr. West­en, Ms. White, and Rorate all knew per­fect­ly well where this inter­view was to be found; they all cite the source. So how could they have got­ten such an impor­tant fact wrong? They accuse the pope of being dis­mis­sive about Ms. Boni­no’s abor­tion advo­ca­cy with the words “nev­er mind that,” when a check of the very source they have at their fin­ger­tips will show that the pope was refer­ring to some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent when he said those words. How could they have got­ten it so wrong? (Don’t answer that.)

And the tran­script will show too that the pope prais­es Ms. Boni­no for some­thing very dif­fer­ent than her stance on abor­tion. It will show his top­ic was assis­tance to immi­grants and refugees. It will show that abor­tion is not men­tioned, not even once, in the entire exchange. That is the truth.