Pope Francis’ associates compare right-wing US Christians with jihadists Two leading theologians close to Pope Francis have said that American evangelicals and hard-line Catholics have a worldview that is […]

Two leading theologians close to Pope Francis have said that American evangelicals and hard-line Catholics have a worldview that is “not too far apart’’ from jihadists.

Their article in the journal Civilta’ Cattolica, which has outraged religious conservatives in the US, goes on to accuse right-wing Catholics and Christians of making an unholy pact with President Trump, and of deepening political polarisation in the United States.

Some experts have interpreted the article as a call from Pope Francis himself for the church to dissociate itself from the US administration’s right-wing policies on everything from climate change to migration. Pope Francis has previously hit out at President Donald Trump’s proposals to build a wall between Mexico and the US – a policy the pontiff had said was not Christian.

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The Vatican has refrained from commenting on the article.

But Vatican expert Nello Scavo, author of four books on the current pope, told i he thought the article had the Francis’s backing.

Authors have the ear of the Pope

‘I doubt very much that Francis doesn’t approve of this article’

“I doubt very much that Francis wasn’t aware of this article — or that he doesn’t approve of it. He’s very close to both of the authors. And he’s had three weeks to criticise it if he’d wanted to,” he said.

Antonio Spadaro, the journal’s editor, is said it have the ear of Pope Francis, a fellow Jesuit. The second author, Marcelo Figueroa, a protestant, was asked by the Holy See to set up the Argentinean edition of its L’Osservatore Romano newspaper.

Provocatively, the authors declare that the philosophy of the Christian right and violent Islamists are more similar than many care to think: “At heart, the narrative of terror shapes the world-views of jihadists and the new crusaders and is imbibed from wells that are not too far apart,” they write.

‘American self-described fundamentalists are not decapitating Muslims or crucifying Middle Eastern Christians’

Some US Catholics reacted scornfully. “As far as I am aware, American self-described fundamentalists are not destroying 2,000 year-old architectural treasures, decapitating Muslims, crucifying Middle Eastern Christians, promoting vile anti-Semitic literature, or slaughtering octogenarian French priests,” wrote Samuel Gregg of the right-wing Catholic think tank, the Acton Institute, in the Catholic World Report.

Tim Stanley said in the Catholic Herald: “It makes sweeping generalisations that are untrue. Not all evangelicals are fundamentalists, for instance, and not all evangelical fundamentalists are Right-wing activists.”

‘Political and religious groups in the US have joined forces against Pope Francis’

Mr Scavo, in his book “The Enemies of Francis”, has claimed, however, that a powerful array of political and religious groups in the US have joined forces against the Argentinian pontiff. These include, he said, Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, and the shadowy Catholic lobbying group, The Knights of Columbus, an organisation which has been called “The Catholic Masons”. Cardinal Dolan was reported to be one of 13 cardinals who signed a letter to the Pope claiming that the current Synod had been hijacked by liberal interest groups.

Mr Scavo believes conservative politicians are still working with right–wing Catholics to oppose what they see as Pope Francis’s left-wing take on everything from gay marriage and economics, to migrants’ rights and the environment.

Steve Bannon, a supporter of apocalyptic geopolitics

Significantly, the Civilta’ Cattolica article singles out Steve Bannon, a Catholic, and Mr Trump’s chief strategist, as a “supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics” that has blocked action against climate change and exploited fears of migrants and Muslims with calls for “walls and purifying deportations”.

The mention of Mr Bannon, who has connections with America’s far-right, also raises the issue of integralism — the European Catholic Church’s past bid to integrate church and state, and its dalliance with fascism.

The article argues that right-wing American evangelicals and Catholics risk corrupting the Roman Catholic faith with an ideology intended to inject “religious influence in the political sphere”.

Pope Francis wants to detach the Catholic Church from state politics

Pope Francis has made it clear during his reign that he wants the Catholic Church to detach itself from state politics, even if the Pontiff campaigns strongly on issues such as poverty, which have a strong political overtones.

Some observers believe, too, it is significant the article is jointly penned by a protestant and a Catholic. Pope Francis has made it his mission to bridge the gap between the different Christian denominations.

This article is primarily a call for the greater unity between the Catholic and protestants. And for Christians of all denominations to think about what their told and to question political dogma, said Mr Scavo.