Monday, May 28, 2018

The Pope Movie!


Ok ok, I am about to contradict myself mere hours later here after telling the Vatican to fuck off on the abortion issue. Thanks again Ireland it had to be done by somebody without a dictatorial asshole in charge and a group of bullying male chauvinists and their female Sonderkommandos.

This documentary out now in theaters, Pope Francis Man of his Word, was attended today by us along with a dozen fellow old ex-Catholics or hell I dont know, present day believers. Anyway, the theater could have had a bingo game before it started it was that demo.

This doc, about the Pope, my favorite Pope by the way is fascinating. Yeah yeah, its fawning, there arent any real hard questions asked of Francis and it makes him out to be a saint, which he is. But come on, this guy is a fucking revolutionary and I dont care if he presides over a corrupt cover up organization that has done horrific things in the last 2000 years. I know, in this country especially, its hard to believe that things change for the better and its certain humans that do so. We here in the United States are lurching backwards but perhaps the Vatican has found the guy who can change it. The humble Jesuit from Argentina may be the guy.

Filmmaker Wim Wenders simply lets the Pope talk. About the plundering of the environment, the income inequality, the poverty, the question of why a God would allow suffering, child molestation by the clergy, natural disasters, the gays and many other reasons why he never ever wanted to be a Pope. Anyone who strives to be the Pope, he says, is not a man of God.

Wenders follows the Pope around the world, to Brazil, to the Philippines, to the Central African Republic and then to the United States, still run by a decent man named Barack Obama at the time. Pope Francis gets right in with the ones nobody in gated communities (his screed on gated communities is classic revolution) would even acknowledge exists. The sick, the poor, the deformed, the dying, the inmates at a Philadelphia prison and finally with the scum of the earth, the Congress of the United States.

His speech to Congress made me both happy and infuriated, To see phonies like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and the rest of that disgusting body of miscreants wiping tears or standing and applauding as the Pope gives a speech on saving the Earth, saving the poor, doing the right thing made me want to puke. But then anytime I see Republicans in Congress it makes me want to heave.

Look, Im a Pope Francis fanboy. I take what I can get in this shitty world and he is one of those things I take as hope. We have two pictures on our fridge. One is of Max and I running together. The other is of Pope Francis and Barack Obama enjoying a laugh together. Looking at those pictures makes me happy.

This documentary made me happy even at the short shot of a lumbering monster waddling into meet Pope Francis.

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