Pope Francis compares politicians who take against homosexuals, gypsies and Jews to Hitler
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Pope Francis said on Friday politicians who rage against homosexuals, gypsies and Jews remind him of Hitler.
“It is not coincidental that at times there is a resurgence of symbols typical of Nazism,” Francis said in an address to participants of an international conference on criminal law.
“And I must confess to you that when I hear a speech (by) someone responsible for order or for a government, I think of speeches by Hitler in 1934, 1936,” he said, departing from his prepared address.
“With the persecution of Jews, gypsies, and people with homosexual tendencies, today these actions are typical (and) represent ‘par excellence’ a culture of waste and hate. That is what was done in those days and today it is happening again.”
During the 1933-45 Nazi regime in Germany, six million Jews were killed and homosexuals and gypsies were among those sent to extermination camps.
Pope Francis did not name any politicians or countries as the targets of his criticism.
The fragile and vulnerable person, the Pope said, is defenceless in the face of the interests of the market and the power that some economic sectors exert over the state.
To defend democratic institutions and the development of humanity, the Pope said, jurists need to contain the punitive irrationality which manifests itself in many forms, such as mass imprisonment, crowding and torture in prisons, arbitrariness and abuse by security forces and the criminalisation of social protest.
He said that penal science needs to overcome an idealistic vision and come close to reality.
Global financial capital, the Pope said, is the cause of serious crimes not only against property but also against people and the environment. He called it “organised crime” that is responsible for issues such as the over-indebtedness of states and the plundering of the natural resources of our planet.
The Pope said that penal law cannot be alien to behaviours in which those in power exploit society’s fragile situations to the detriment of the collective well-being. “This happens, for example, when the prices of public debt securities are artificially lowered through speculation, without worrying that this will affect or aggravate the economic situation of entire nations”.
When such acts lead to hunger, misery, forced migration and death from avoidable diseases, environmental disaster and ethnocide of indigenous peoples, the Pope said, they are as serious as crimes against humanity.
