The Pope Rewrites History, Condemns Marxism and Unbridled Capitalism

All religions at one time or another have rewritten history in hopes of containing dissent. Benedict, showing his colors as the "Inquisition Pope" rewrites the history of the European invasion of the New World. In a what appears to be an endorsement of the blatantly racist "The White Man's Burden" first expressed in a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. "At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule people of other nations for their own benefit (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the "burden" of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocentrism."
I'm sure the people of Montezuma's empire would see it differently. Cortez imposed Christianity in the context of a blood bath and theft of gold and other treasures of the Aztec empire.
Telegraph

Pope Benedict XVI condemned globalization and Marxism as the causes of many of Latin America’s ills on the final day of his trip to Brazil, and lamented the wide gap between the region’s small elite and its poor masses.


“The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit,” the pope told a bishops’ conference on Sunday before flying back to Rome after a five-day visit to the country with the largest Catholic population in the world.


Benedict also lashed out at unbridled capitalism and globalization. He warned the two could give “rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.”


The pope did not name any countries in his criticism of capitalism and Marxism, but Latin America has become deeply divided in recent years amid a sharp tilt to the left - with the election of leftist leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and the re-election of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.


Marxism also still influences some grassroots Catholic activists in Latin America, remnants of the liberation theology movement Benedict moved to crush when he was a cardinal.


Liberation theology holds that the Christian faith should be reinterpreted specifically to deliver oppressed people from injustice.


Touching on a sensitive historical episode, Benedict said Latin American Indians had been “silently longing” to become Christians when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors took over their native lands centuries ago.


“In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture,” he said.


Many Indians, however, say the conquest of Latin America by Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese lead to misery, enslavement and death.