Pope Francis will use the same lectern that Abraham Lincoln used to deliver the Gettysburg Address to deliver his speech on immigration and religious liberty at the end of September when he visits Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families.

Lincoln used the lectern for two minutes on Nov 19, 1863 to dedicate part of the Civil War battlefield as a cemetery. His famous speech on liberty, included the famous phrase, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” It famously concluded with the phrase, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The symbolism is significant. The speech will be given in front of the historic Independence Hall in Philadelphia using the “Lincoln Lectern.” Though freedom and independence is not a historical Roman Catholic strong point, the Church nevertheless wants to associate itself with freedom in the modern age.

Historically, for instance, globalization, which the popes actively promote, leads to less freedom. Wealth redistribution and social welfare, does not lead to independence, but dependence on the government welfare system. And there are many more examples.

Though a connection between Rome and the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln still stands as one of the great suspicions of American History, the papacy obviously wants to cloak it all in nice speeches and high-sounding platitudes.

Perhaps one of the most stunning points about the pope’s upcoming speech is that it is reportedly going to promote religious freedom, something that Rome has traditionally opposed, though now the Church advocates it, at least for the time being.

“Pope Pius IX, in his Encyclical Letter of August 15, 1854, said: `The absurd and erroneous doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience are a most pestilential error–a pest, of all others, most to be dreaded in a state.’ The same pope, in his Encyclical Letter of December 8, 1864, anathematized `those who assert the liberty of conscience and of religious worship,’ also ‘all such as maintain that the church may not employ force…’ Says Bishop O’Connor: ‘Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world…’” The Great Controversy, page 564, 565.

In spite of the Catholic Church’s shameful history of the Inquisition and other tools of religious oppression, the Church has assumed the mantle of protector of religious liberty in America and around the world. It is ironic that the city of freedom has become the place where the pope will promote the papal version of religious freedom. Could Pope Francis be working to bring an end to religious liberty by appearing to promote it?

“The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in Christlike garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of the papacy that existed in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The papacy that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less cruel and despotic now than when she crushed out human liberty and slew the saints of the Most High.” The Great Controversy, page 571

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