Last week, during Pope Francis’ visit to Bolivia, President Evo Morales presented the pontiff with a curious memento: a crucifix fashioned from a hammer and sickle. A classic communist symbol, as the AP reported, it is patterned after one created by Luis Espinal, a leftist Jesuit priest slain in 1980.
 
Now those of us with a discerning view of human history are understandably troubled by the jarring incongruity of the two worldviews represented on the icon. The cross is a blessed reminder of the ultimate sacrifice, saving grace, and the eternal hope of all mankind. In sharp contrast, the hammer & sickle symbolizes the most murderous ideology the world has seen thus far.
 
Not to be too alarmist here, but the worldwide (considering the influence of the Catholic Church) implications of Pope Francis’ acceptance of this affront to true Christianity are staggering.

 
As usual Dennis Prager has an astute assessment ~

Why Pope Francis Is Keeping His Hammer-and-Sickle Crucifix ~

 

The pope’s acceptance of Morales’s gift — along with his attacks on capitalism during his Latin American tour — further confirms one of the most troubling moral developments of our time: The Roman Catholic Church is currently led by a man whose social, political, and economic views have been shaped by leftism more than by any other religious or moral system.[…]
 
In terms of evil committed, what is the difference between the hammer and sickle and the swastika? Would the pope receive, let alone keep, a Fascist, racist, or Nazi sculpture with a crucified Christ on it? Of course not. Yet the hammer and sickle represents more human suffering than all of them combined. The number of people enslaved and murdered under the hammer and sickle dwarfs the number of people enslaved and murdered by any other doctrine in history.
 
 
To make things worse, Pope Francis received this gift from a man (Morales) wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his jacket. Is that, too, not worthy of condemnation by the Vatican? Che Guevara devoted his life to undermining human liberty, and to killing innocents in the name of Communism.[…]
 
There could not have been a gift that more accurately represents this pope’s value system than Christ crucified on a hammer and sickle. First, in a literal sense, that is exactly what Communists have done wherever they have assumed power — crucified Christ by working to violently destroy Christianity and murder Christians. Second, in a figurative sense, the gift represents the mélange of Christianity and Marxism, precisely what much of the Church — again, especially in Latin America, and especially in the person of this pope — stands for.[…]
 
My heart breaks for the millions of Catholics who feel that their beloved Church is being led over a moral and religious cliff by a leftist pope and innumerable other leftists among cardinals, bishops, and parish priests.
Though I am not a Catholic, my heart breaks too. The only institutions that can resist the left-wing takeover of contemporary life are religious ones. When they fail, upon which institutions can we depend?

 
And so, now what? Prager continues ~

Tragically, we cannot turn to the contemporary Catholic Church. When the pope keeps a hammer-and-sickle crucifix; when the pope declares free-market capitalism, the one economic system that has lifted masses of people out of poverty, to be largely evil (“the dung of the devil”); when Cuba’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega declares that there are no political prisoners in Cuba; and when the pope issues an encyclical on global warming while the oldest Christian communities in the world are exterminated, it is clear that while one can still turn to individual Catholic priests and lay leaders for moral guidance, one cannot turn to the Church and its pope for moral guidance. On the contrary. One must fight back.

 
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Related:
Ann Barnhardt, who is Catholic, is a bit more direct than Prager ~It Is Now Appropriate To Begin Serious Discussions as to Whether Pope Francis is, in fact, The Antichrist 😯

 
Why Did Catholic Media Get the Commie-Crucifix Story Wrong? ~ Illuminating article by Pat Archbold reveals just which sources can and can’t be trusted to report the truth about this pope and his antics

 
The President & the Pope share a twisted worldview