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Will the next pope continue the last pope’s consistent record of appeasing Islam?

The late Pope Francis had a long record of whitewashing Islamic jihad violence and making moral equivalence arguments in order to downplay jihad terror. Back in 2017, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar, noticed the pope’s yeoman service for the Islamic cause and thanked him for his “defense of Islam against the accusation of violence and terrorism.”

Francis was not just a defender of Islam but also a defender of the Sharia death penalty for blasphemy. After Islamic jihadists in Jan. 2015 murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who had drawn Muhammad, Francis obliquely justified the murders by saying that “it is true that you must not react violently, but although we are good friends if [an aide] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t make a toy out of the religions of others. These people provoke and then (something can happen). In freedom of expression, there are limits.”

Pope Francis apparently believed that murdering people for violating Sharia blasphemy laws is “normal,” and wasn’t terrorism. “Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist,” he said in a 2017 speech. “There are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and religions—and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger because they feed on hate and xenophobia.”

So there was no Islamic terrorism, but if you engage in “intolerant generalizations,” you could “expect a punch.” Pope Francis, like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, apparently thought that the problem was not jihad terror, but non-Muslims talking about jihad terror; Muslims would be peaceful if non-Muslims would simply censor themselves and self-impose Sharia blasphemy restrictions regarding criticism of Islam.

Pope Francis also had no patience with those who discuss such matters, saying: “I don’t like to talk about Islamic violence, because every day, when I read the newspaper, I see violence.” He added that he often saw stories in newspapers about Italians being violent. “They are baptized Catholics,” he insisted. “They are violent Catholics.” He concluded: “I believe it’s not fair to identify Islam with violence. It’s not fair and it’s not true.”

Yet the pontiff’s comparison made no sense, for Italian Catholics who behaved violently were not acting in accord with the teachings of their religion, while the Qur’an and Islamic teaching contain numerous exhortations to violence.

But Pope Francis, defender of Islam, did not concern himself with such minutiae. Nor did he appear to be particularly concerned about the fact that all his false statements about the motivating ideology behind the massive Muslim persecution of Christians over the twelve years of his papacy only enabled and abetted that persecution, for if that ideology is not identified and confronted, it will continue to flourish.

In line with his willful ignorance regarding Islam, Pope Francis was a strong advocate of mass Muslim migration into the West. Reuters reported in Aug. 2024 that he “strongly decried the treatment of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe.” The pope lamented: “There are those who work systematically and with every means to reject migrants. And this, when done with conscience and responsibility, is a grave sin.” The solution to this evil, he said, would be “global governance of migration based on justice, brotherhood and solidarity.” Yeah, that would fix everything.

This followed his May 2024 statement that “migration is something that makes a country grow.” He decried historical stereotypes about migrants: “They say that you Irish migrated and brought the whiskey, and that the Italians migrated and brought the mafia. Migrants sometimes suffer a lot. They suffer a lot.” He made it clear that he didn’t like any criticism of open borders: “To close the border and leave them there, that is madness.”

Back in April 2022, the pope claimed that opposition to mass migration was really all about racism: “It is true, refugees are subdivided. There’s first class, second class, skin color, [if] they come from a developed country [or] one that is not developed. We are racists, we are racists. And this is bad.”

Of course. What else could we possibly be but racists? The pope doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that there might be reasons for opposing mass migration other than racism. He has consistently framed the acceptance of mass migration policies, with no regard for the cultural identity or integrity, much less the security, of the host nation, as a core aspect of the Christian commitment.

Will the new pope follow Pope Francis in these positions that lead to civilizational suicide, or chart a new path? If Europe is to survive as a home of free societies, the new pope must represent a sharp departure from Francis’ line.