When Jorge Mario Bergoglio stepped out onto the balcony of the Vatican after being elected unanimously and took on the name “Francis I” jaws dropped, a few historians fainted, woman and children and 700 million devoted Catholics from South America went berserk cheering, only a handful of people ran for cover fearing that the taking of Francis of Assisi’s name could possibly presage the coming of an ecumenical religion of the world that might encompass the big five – Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and the mish-mosh of Spiritual pagans – even a sect or two of the Muslims, with an eye for bringing it all into the general fold of the looming and dedicated energy that invigorates the promising idea of The New World Order.

At 77, Francis I has maybe ten years to perform his Supreme Pontificate. He is in a hurry. Just as it was a radical thing to take on the name of Francis of Assisi, where no other for better than a seven hundred years thought to do, so it is true that no other Pope was ever in the position to try to fill the shoes of this radical and unconventional monk from the Middle Ages.

When Bergoglio took the sacrosanct name of Francis it was with full knowledge that he was taking on not merely this man’s legacy he was taking on his persona, resurrecting his radical spirit of reform with an eye toward a social revolution inside the church and turning former pieties upside down by displays of ostentatious behavior carefully crafted to make his points. It was sacrosanct because his outlaw behavior was to be untouchable by his connection to a certain saint’s name. He was effectively announcing the second coming of the Francis circus of the audacious. Francis of Assisi, who did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted whether it was in the tent of a Muslim Sultan or a foxhole in the forest of Saxony, is the template by which the current Pope performs his act.

What’s He Up To With Islam? Same Thing As First Francis
Perhaps most pertinent to Francis’ reign is the precedent set by his namesake in regards to the Muslims. In a legendary move Francis of Assisi, during the third crusade, took it upon himself to go the Sultan in Egypt to try to negotiate some sort of a deal. This he did without the approval of Innocent III, arguably the most powerful Pope of all time. His mission was thought to be to get the Sultan to lay down their arms, the Holy Land and to cede the Crusader States of Acre and Antioch back to the Pope and the Kings of Europe. But that was not exactly what F of A was up to.

When he confronted the Sultan he tried to convert him to Christianity. He challenged the Sultan’s mullahs. He would throw himself into the fire if the mullahs would, the one who lived would be the one whose God should be worshipped.

The Sultan kindly declined, offered the monk a reward, which was declined and the deluded monk was sent packing. The challenged mullahs and the angry generals wanted to throw Francis into the fire anyway, but the Sultan took him for the madman that he was and, as Muslims in history have been wont to do, treated the simpleton with compassion and pity.

F of A was ridiculed and even chided when he got back to the troops of the Crusaders, Innocent III was not happy, and the people of the Church pitied him for his humiliation. From that point on the legend of Francis lost its shine. This scheme was the one thing that Francis was unable to pull off in his career. Unfortunately for him and his reputation this singular failure came near the end of his career. It is the priority of the new Francis to pull this off, both for the Church and for the sake of Francis’ reputation.

It was only a year removed from his enthronement that Francis I called a Muslim leader to come pray at the Vatican for peace. How telling is this? Nothing absolute concerning peace or reconciliation has yet happened. But how ironic it seems, that seven hundred years later a man named Francis would bring a leader of the Muslim world to Rome to pray with him for peace and understanding between the two warring religions?

Beyond fixing the deadly things that ail the Church right now, this issue is the priority of the Papal See. Not only is it necessary for gaining ascendency overall religious power, but it will exonerate the saint and the name of Francis and all that it stands for. It is an astounding circumstance of the ironic connections of God’s prophecies through the annals of history and time. It is a proof in the flow of God’s prophetic word and its ability to foresee the connections of spiritual and carnal things and the conspiring forces that oppose the salvation of Jesus Christ.

Francis of Assisi is the name Jorge Bergoglio has slapped on his chest for all to consider and weigh. Whereas his predecessor, Benedict XVI,  had taken on a threadbare name which immediately cried conservatism and not reform. Just by taking the name “Benedict”, he had announced he would stay close to shore, would have no enthusiasm for the voice of the people or their needs. Bergoglio did the opposite.

It is common knowledge that the name taken by the Cardinal who has been elected Supreme Pontiff by the Roman Curia has supreme meaning, carrying with it a tangible sign that the Pope intends to step fully into the fray of the power politics of international affairs. Over the last millennium taking on a name of significance has been the first requirement, and at times the only thing the curia could impose upon the sovereign office of Popedom. Through this political tactic the Vatican has been able to announce its intentions not only to the faithful but also to the secular powers of governments, presidents, premiers, legislatures, international organizations, kings, emirs and even saints.

By taking a name of significant meaning (usually of a former Pope, rarely a new name) the Vatican accomplishes in one word what is equivalent to all the combined State of the Union Addresses that a president of the United States might make throughout his four or eight-year tenure in office. It is an inclusive declaration of who and what he shall be, almost a bold promise of what his rule will amount to, what spiritual and earthly things it will accomplish. By it the newly elected Pontiff prophecies of his glories and his reign. (Refer to related story about Pope Names: “What’s In a Name?”)

But many of the Popes have been required to be conservative, just as Benedict, the one who shocked the church and the world by stepping down, had been forced to be a defender of the old and worn-out dogmas of a worn-out and pathetic institution run by decrepit old geezers who, so to speak, had been caught with ‘their pants down’ a little too often.

Conservative Popes traditionally conduct their political and religious business as if they were floating down a lazy meandering stream; slow, watching, going with the flow, trying to stay away from the shore of new inhabitants avoiding all dangers by simply not looking at what lurks behind the brush or listening to the shrieks and hollers coming out of the jungle darkness of human affairs.

But the Popes that are forced to be progressive because they cannot avoid the tumult must take a bold and radical course. Ambition must be ceased as the new Pope has done. It forces a Pope to fix his eye upon absolute power both over the church and over the world. He must raft down the rapids – bold, defiant, paddling hard, willing to go over the falls, risking it all. But, ambition, as the Jewish Talmud declares, destroys its possessor. Some Popes have been dashed to pieces by trying to live up to the name they pinned on themselves, others, especially in the Middle Ages, have beaten the odds and ruled over worldly powers with cruelty and ruthless zeal. All have sat in the helm of the boat and boldly claimed they are the boss of the river, leader of all that is on the shore and all that shall come before them. At the bow is written the captain’s name for all to see, there it breeds confidence for the crew and sends the message to other contending boats that he is the captain and he knows what he wants and how to steer the boat.

By the name, the Pope does not have to explain himself, does not have to condescend to people who might ask, who are you? The name introduces him, the name says who he is. The name he takes is the beginning of Papal propaganda; in the face of the competitors and those in the other boats. It inspires not only his people but gives inspiration to him. It is a statement of hubris to pump him up continually by the lips of any person whom he hears speak it. It is a continuing reminder for him and his followers of the course he has set for the Church and his own glory. It speaks of the goals he has set for the throne of the Church over which he is supreme Lord.  

Francis of Assisi – the unconventional monk
The only thing Francis of Assisi and other Popes hold in common is that they dropped their birth names to take on a pseudonym by which to further their spiritual and political aspirations. The original Francis was born John, but his friends gave him the name Francis because of his love for the songs of the French Troubadours who wandered about the nation as jugglers entertaining and singing about chivalrous and romantic fancies for virgins and fair maidens and taking romanticism to its lowest levels of surrealistic lunacy and dumbness.

Pope Francis has already proven he will walk in the footsteps of the first Francis. The radical and zany original Frank broke laws, by-passed tradition and papal direction, delved into international politics ignoring popes and kings, took the handling of the sacraments into his own hands without Papal approval, organized his own disciples above church regulations and was intentionally a non-conformist against any church regulation which he felt had fallen into decadence, impotence or ill-repute, and wandered the country-side singing foolish songs and juggling balls and plates in the air as if they had something to do with God and godliness. He was a man who thought himself ahead of the Church, even above the Church and its established orthodoxy. The first Francis fashioned himself a reformer of true piety and faith. The objective observer of this Francis would naturally wonder what kind of a circus act that the Argentinian bishop was decreeing when he took on the name Francis.

Summary of the First Francis’ Sainted Career
Roman Catholic biographers have chosen to describe Francis of Assisi as an individualist, where others might have called him a non-conformist, even somewhat of a hoodlum as a youth who had left the service in the local Assisi military.

His legend is built on the tradition that God spoke to him one day and said “Do you not see that my house is in ruins?” God, he said, spoke specifically of a little stone church that lay forsaken in the woods near his town. He began enlisting all the help he could to rebuild the church from its ruinous condition. This is surely one of the objectives of the current Francis who has as a priority rebuilding the Roman Church in its ruinous shape. Upon ascending the throne last year upon Benedict’s resignation, Bergoglio had inherited a papacy that was out of touch with its people, membership in Europe was failing. Scandals of all sorts had shamed the church in its own people’s minds. Spiritually it was viewed as a crumbling archaic institution out of touch with 21st-century society and the realities of the necessities of life in general. Francis I was voted in to do something about this worrisome state of affairs.

The original Francis had stolen money and wares from his father to finance the project of rebuilding the dilapidated church. For his troubles his father took him to court and threw him in jail. But St. Francis has always been extolled by the Catholic Church for this dubious act. Officially, they proclaim that his thievery was justified because it meant he was willing to do anything to serve God. The Church insists that it was acceptable because he restored the stolen goods to his father, literally, throwing them in his father’s face and never speaking to him again, indignant that someone would dare to question his right to commit crimes or injustice in God’s behalf. From there he proceeded to build the church and restore it to its former glory. It served as the monastic headquarters for the mendicant group he founded. For this, Francis became a noted saint – a builder of the church in ruins. As all the things Francis is famous for, this should be seen as part of Francis I inaugural decree as well. We may surmise that Francis I is willing to do anything in the name of God, anything which he deems needed to advance his maverick tactics for restoring the church to power and glory.

F of Assisi always went out of his way to do things unconventionally, even in regard to the Word of God. For instance when rebuilding the church he begged all the people he saw to give him a stone; in fact he became a new sort of beggar that asks for a stone instead of bread. It was a sort of left-handed slap to God, for God had reassured us in His word that anyone who asked Him for bread He would never jerk around by giving them a stone instead. (See: Lk. 11:11)

In that spirit, emulating Francis, the Pope recently held out a box with the rosary beads in it and said it was medicine, and now I am a pharmacist – never mind that the idea of those beads are clearly borrowed from Buddhism and are pagan, and hardly a reckoned remedy for anything in Christian doctrine. It was the stock and trade of F of Assisi to out-do God and use a pun to contradict the Will of God in Word, so it appears that the Pope will use such tactics to entertain those he hopes to initiate back into the faith.    

He Claimed To Be ‘Le Jongleur De Dieu’ for Mary
Assisi was not a ‘fool for God’ in the way the scriptures speak of it, but just a plain fool draped in the loud clothing of jesters and acrobats. He was canonized for being a fool.

Along with his troubadour act, Francis performed along the countryside as a juggler and tumbler, or acrobat. His principal biographer Gilbert Chesterton said of him, “He was not only a humanist but a humorist… doing what no one else would have done.” As such he was a worshipper of the maiden which he transposed to Mary and worshipped as the ‘mother of God’. Making her the object of his praise and reverence as the chivalrous knights of the age were wont to do with their chosen maid, regardless of whether that maid was betrothed or married to someone else. In this reverence F of A heaped further garbage onto the sacrilegious landfill of Mariology.

Mariology is something which no Pope will ever disregard. Today’s Francis is more than willing to perform its worship, more reverently than the worship of Christ. Most unfortunate is the distraction it became from the real scriptural message that believers are to be the Bride of Christ, a theme that runs profusely throughout Scripture and is of a true sacred nature and not a matter for vaudevillian nonsense. But it shows the total lack of concern for Holy Scripture, not only inherent in Papal doctrinal tradition but the life of one of its most exalted saints.  

He dressed and lived like the poor, became a man of the people, living, and eating and doing as they were required to do and live. Francis I, from the first moment, was being paraded by Vatican press releases as a man of the poor who rides busses to work. This was Bergoglio‘s political image, a contrivance as part of his political platform. He was the precedent for the unconventional sainted Monk.  

Francis of Assisi purportedly had an obsessive love of the Eucharist. Within his first year Francis I made sure to have an ostentatious show of giving communion to over a million souls on the beach at Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Some Catholics were outraged about the way this cattle car scene was ministered. Though the Catholic Church’s idea and operation of the so-called Eucharist and ‘Communion’ is an abomination of idolatry it was one of the more favorite points of show and devotion of the original Francis taking it to heights of spiritualism and showmanship never done before in the annals of its long history of Jezebel spiritualism.

Outrage over Crass Communion
Traditionalists around the world have been appalled by the Pope’s crass handling of the so-called holy sacrament. One report bemoans the way Francis is offering the Eucharist.

“The Lord in a Plastic Cup??! Giving Communion at World Youth Day in Rio (Rio de Janeiro) was scurrilous, thoughtless, with horrifying forms of an unworthy giving of Communion… The poor understanding of the Eucharist has reached a new high point of slovenliness.”

But the unconventional is done intentionally and in the spirit of Francis of Assisi. The Pope must undo the conventions that have turned off just about every sector of society in the World Wide Catholic Church. When he took on the name he was announcing to one and all that they could expect he would do these unconventional things to draw in the youth and disenfranchised and upset the cart of the conservative things said and done by Pope Benedict.

Thinks He is a humorist
On Sunday, Nov. 17 of his first year the pope appeared at his studio window in St. Peter’s Square holding up a box designed to look like medicine but containing rosary beads, saying, “I now want to suggest a medicine. What, you ask, ‘the Pope is now a pharmacist?'” His efforts to be humorous and witty are in the spirit of his namesake, attempting to be unconventional and wry.

Trying to Be Champion of the Poor
Other things he has attempted in the spirit of the original include sending his chief alms-giver Archbishop Konrad Krajewski into the city at night with the Swiss Guard, sometimes he goes with them. Like Francis of Assisi going to the poor and dressing like them to identify with them he pretends to live a common life-style. Somehow it never quite washes.

Man of the People
He announced he had once been a bouncer in a bar as a young man and worked in a chemical lab likening himself to the early trouble making years of the original Francis. In a publicity stunt he has spurned the use of the popemobile and uses a 30 year-old Renault to get around Vatican grounds. Not living in luxury Francis of A. lived under the stars and in huts and hung around with peasants. This Francis likes to make it appear he also hangs with regular people and then goes and sits on his infallible throne.

A Fool for Christ
He has made a public pretense at humility. Emulating Francis as a juggler, tumbler and all around wiseacre, he shows himself in  public with his hair down. He has allowed himself to be photographed wearing a clown nose and jesting with a newly-wed couple. He tries to paint a bit of a surrealistic image of himself as one that is humble and more than willing to laugh at himself so he turn the historical realities of Popery and the Vatican on its ear. In a vulgar way he is trying to be a ’fool’ for Christ. It is a carefully contrived new age passion show that is planned to distance the throne from the curmudgeonry of the shelved papacy of Benedict. 

Changing Laws and Ways of Doing Business
F of A had been a bold innovator. Someone not afraid of change. This Francis also is not averse to changing the centuries of traditions of the Roman Church such as: its stand on celibacy, of hiding homosexuality among priests, woman, and the general laity, disavowing woman in the priesthood, divorce, birth control, yoking it up with Muslims, kicking the tires on new ways of approaching the sacraments and just about any innovation that might be clamored for by the people or demanded by the necessities of cover ups and slight-of-hand presto-chango maneuvers around the law.

As with F of A so this new Francis is committed to being a reformer and a visionary of compulsory change in order to take the Church into the 21st Century which has been declared a new Millennium of Church glory. He even hopes to draw in the other two monotheistic religions of the world into the fold that will in turn be able to draw the world together under religions dominant spiritual influence. It’s about power more than peace.    

In choosing his name the new Pope had told the enlightened clergy and body of Catholics what to expect from his Papacy and he has made good on it in his first 16 months of being seated on the throne. Having the name gives the Pope license to use it like a mandate handed down from an anointed saint who is high up in the historical genealogy of the cavalcade of Catholic saints.

Speaking in democratic terms, taking the name Francis declares power, rule, truth, authority, vision, order, competence, change, daring, revision, and foresight. It inspires the skeptical Catholic to believe that vitally needed reform is forthcoming. Drastic means for drastic times.

In taking the name Francis, Bergoglio has done the first thing needed to pull off the enormous job ahead of him. In spite of his age, this PR move in a name gives the Pope the best chance to bring to consummation his goal of giving the Vatican the top-dog voice of religion in the world. He wants to affect the international politics of the globe; reform the church that is in disrepair; reenergize the faith of the people by acting like Francis, by extolling Mariology and the Eucharist as focuses of worship; convincing the religions, governments, and his own subjects to forget about the hideous crimes of child abuse and rape by its clergy; while trying to convince world powers, especially in the Holy Land, that he and the Roman Church are the only ones that can crusade for world peace because the Papacy is the only authority on earth with the credentials to pull off unity, peace and goodwill everywhere among men.

Be sure, this Francis believes he can replicate and even pull off the one thing Francis of Assisi could not – that is, to convert the religions of the Holy Land to doing things the Catholic Way by submitting to the authority of the Papal See and the brand of Christian gospel that it sells under the bogus spirit of humanism.

He wants to be Francis the Troubadour, has vowed to be Francis the peacemaker, the great maverick and reformer, the one great juggler and manipulator of spiritual miracles and supernatural dogma, fascinating the world and able to keep all the balls in the air while the world looks on entranced by the spiritual performance.

One thing is certain, this Francis is a juggler, a performer, with the guts of a carnival barker. There is no authority he does not intent to confront, no means he will not use to accomplish his end. His magic show will work only if one takes their eye off the ball, distracted by deceptive words and unseen moves. This is what the coming False Prophet and side-kick of the Antichrist will be able to do to the politicians, religious and the mass of people – only those with spiritual eyes wide open will escape the strong delusion that is being woven.