The Smooth Pope

Determining for us most truths,
taste matters more than courage. We are pebbles
with edges that consensus smoothes,
while we against all roughness rage as rebels.

Like pebbles many men attempt
to smooth rough edges of a stony truth,
from truth for goodness’ sake exempted,
too inhibited to sound uncouth.

Unlike Pope Francis’ view of Jews:
on them in bad taste far too rough,
when for their self-defense he’d accuse
the race for being tough, not merciful enough

to foes whom he far less than Jews deplored.
It’s harder to be Jewish than a Pope,
a fact Pope Francis piously ignored,
when making “genocidal Jews” his treyfah trope.

In “Condolences Three Days After Pope’s Death,” NYT, 4/25/25, Adam Rasgon writes:

In a book released in November 2024, Francis said the war in Gaza should be investigated to determine whether it constituted a genocide. The statement drew a harsh rebuke from a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, Amichai Chikli, the minister of diaspora affairs, who contended it was a “trivialization” of the term genocide. Israeli officials say that Israel is waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and not civilians. They also argue that it is Hamas that should face charges of genocide after its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and roughly 250 were taken captive. The pope also met with the families of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas.

The text that Pope Francis asked to be read at his funeral, Acts 10:34-43, contains, in verse 39, language that, unlike Nostra Aetate (the Vatican proclamation approved by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965) hardly promotes a peaceful relationship between Jews and Christians:

And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree.