“Of course there are extremists in all religions and in secular movements as well, and we must not generalize about people’s religions”, said Rabbi David Rosen, the worldwide director of Interreligious Affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who joined Pope Francis on his visit to Auschwitz last Friday along with other Jewish leaders.
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“There are violent persons of this religion – this is true: I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists”.
“I think it is not right to identity Islam with violence”, he told reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome after a five-day trip to Poland. “You can not, and it is not true and not right to call Islam a terrorist faith”.
The pope was in Poland from Wednesday to Sunday for the World Youth Day, a week-long event attended by over a million pilgrims.
“There is news about someone killing his fiancee or his mother-in-law, or committing other crimes”, Francis added, noting that the perpetrators of these crimes were often “baptized Catholics”. “If I talk about Islamic violence, then I also have to talk of Catholic violence”.
He met imams in Poland and said they were “looking for peace”.
The article claims Islam as a religion is violent in nature, hates “disbelievers” and says Western politicians who claim otherwise are just out to “garner as many votes as they can for the next election cycle”. The president and his staff have avoided the term “Islamic extremism” and instead call terrorists “violent extremists”.
Pope Francis has lamented that children are being taught at school that gender can be a choice.
During the lunch with 12 World Youth Day organisers from a dozen countries, Pope Francis also said had a “stomach of iron” and considers the German Richard Wagner his favourite composer.
“I wonder how many young people have we as Europeans robbed of their ideals so that they turn to drugs, alcohol or they go there [to Mideast warzones] and enroll”. The love and adoration of money is a “basic terrorism against all of humanity” he said, and has replaced love between humans.
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Dear Reader, our hearts are deeply grieved by the ongoing devastation in Iraq, and through this we have been compelled to take a stand at the gates of hell against the enemy who came to kill and destroy.
