According to:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46676268

"Pope Francis has called on people in developed countries to live a simpler and less materialistic life."

Yep, the head of the richest organisation on Earth, with countless priceless works of art (many of them stolen from their original owners and given to the Church by people like the Nazis in the 1930s/40s), the largest landowner on Earth, and the owner of all sorts of utterly invaluable solid gold or bejewelled trinkets, statues, etc of all sizes, is telling everyone else that material possessions sully the soul and that we should always be on our guard against greed and the acquisition of wealth.

The brazen hypocrisy of this might make you laugh, or it might disgust you, or you might be so familiar with the misuse of religion that you might be totally jaded by now and not react at all, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Quote: "He also condemned the huge divide between the world's rich and poor...

He said, speaking from maybe the most luxurious place on Earth.

saying Jesus's birth in poverty in a stable should make everyone reflect on the meaning of life"

Jesus (if he really was the way the Bible describes him) was the best and purest person ever to walk the Earth. He didn't care about material possessions. He owned little more than the clothes on his back and the sandals on his feet, and he never built even one temple or church. He understood that the only true value was the value of the soul, and that all men are brothers, and that feeding your fellow man is immeasurably better and more pleasing to the soul and to God than collecting expensive material goods for yourself.

And the Catholic Church claims to follow Jesus's actions and teachings. Is there anything in history more hypocritical than the Vatican?

"He continued: "Let us ask ourselves: Do I really need all these material objects and complicated recipes for living? Can I manage without all these unnecessary extras and live a life of greater simplicity?"

And for some reason, the Pope didn't say "Here's an idea, let's sell off some of the useless but priceless art in the Vatican, and use it to help the many millions of starving people in the world. Maybe use some of our wealth to set up actual systems of help to feed and house the very poor in so many countries, instead of just building churches and spending lots of money on lawyers to suppress information about the paedophiles in our group. Let's, you know, do what Jesus would want us to do, and see how that works out for us?"

Sorry for going on, but I *hate* the way religions are misused, such as to make the religion and it's leaders ever more wealthier and to gain them power, or to 'justify' hatred or mass murder by saying that "It's God's will", or by saying that one group of people should be subservient to another because (again) "It's God's will". Throughout the centuries, for example, the "It's God's will" line has been used to justify slavery.

As Napoleon said "Religion stops the poor from murdering the rich".

Even though I'm not religious, I'm not necessarily knocking religion. Religion does bring real comfort to many people, and I know that countless good people are religious, and that religion has done incalculable good for thousands of years. But it's also done incalculable harm too, and it sickens me that very often nothing is ever done about even the most blatant and obvious misuses of the power of any given religious organisation.

And (and I'm not trying to be funny here, I mean this totally seriously) it does seem to me that if there is a God, then not many Popes will go to Heaven. I'm sure that if there is a God, then he won't be stupid/lazy enough to give an automatic get-into-Heaven pass to anyone just because he's the Pope. I'd imagine that the Pope, and everyone else, gets judged by the same criteria, and so the head of such a corrupt, hypocritical, and un-Christian organisation as the Catholic Church is almost certainly destined for the other place. Just my view, but I don't see otherwise.