No Joke: German Vatican Radio Hails Francis As New Luther
Francis as the New Luther -- The Humor of the German Section of Radio Vatican
This photoshop has been in circulation for some time, but we have refrained from publishing it because it could have been dismissed as cheap and disrespectful propaganda. Meanwhile, however, it has been released, entirely above suspicion, namely, on Vatican Radio where it is apparently considered funny and good.
Vatican Radio is one of the official media organs of the Pope. Listeners
and readers in Italy were amazed just a month ago just what was
happening on the German site of Vatican Radio, but is only now becoming
widely available.
On November 6, at 17:49 on the Facebook page of the German section of Vatican Radio a photoshop of Pope Francis in the guise of Martin Luther was published. The text:
"Also a nice variant. We wish you a restful Sunday."
Who is the Pope laughing at? About the "Reformation" or the Catholic Church?
A bad joke? A malicious photoshop?
A joke? A bad joke? A malicious photoshop to discredit Pope Francis? Not at all.
Pope Luther or Protestant Bergoglio? What does Vatican Radio mean?
The weekly,Die Zeit had published the photoshop with the caption published on 4 November: "That Pope Francis considers Luther positively is well known. But is it right?" It was part of the coverage of the Reformation memorandum on 31 October in Lund, Sweden, where Pope Francis had participated.
We of Katholisches.info had seen the photoshop on other sites, but did not post it out of respect for the Pope, because it seemed to us as if it it would be perceived as a critique of Francis and could have been dismissed as cheap polemics. That's what we thought. The editors of the German section of Vatican Radio thinks as quite differently and thinks only too well of it. It is likely that the idea that Francis is the Luther of the 21st century was even considered humorous.
At any rate one knows how some of his German party see the reigning pope.
"Striking"
Some commentators on the Facebook site were enthusiastic: "A brilliant photoshop. Significant and courageous for further Lutheran-Catholic dialogue."
Others expressed their resentment, including those who considered the picture to be "striking," but for the precarious state in which the Church was in the German-speaking world. The German section of Vatican Radio seems to have so arrived in the pleasure society. The concept was already old in the 90s, but it is said that there is a certain "retardation" in Rome.
In the German editorial office of Radio Vatikan, they are also pleased to see that in Austria the former party chairman of the Greens and former KPÖ voters, the atheist who had become a freemason in 1975, abortion, homosexual and immigration advocate, Alexander Van der Bellen, Was elected! Was that too polemical? Oh no. Given the "humor" of the German section of Vatican Radio certainly not.
