Francis • mackaycartoons

Tuesday April 5, 2022

April 6, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 5, 2022

The Vatican holds billions in assets. Residential school survivors say the Pope should step up on compensation

March 29, 2022

As a Canadian delegation prepares for its final meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican Friday, a growing chorus in Canada is hoping Francis commits to immediately remedying the Roman Catholic Church’s broken compensation promises to residential school survivors.

Canadian bishops announced a renewed fundraising effort last fall — $30 million over five years — and say work is well underway.

But critics are skeptical. Even if that money can be raised, they say it’s wrong to make the dwindling number of elderly survivors wait that long. They say that if Canadian bishops won’t do it immediately, the Vatican should.

Although all the full specifics of the Vatican’s holdings are unknown, a tabulation of known assets puts them in the tens or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars.

September 5, 2018

Survivors say the compensation money isn’t for them — it’s to fund addictions and mental health supports, job training, recreation, language preservation and other programs for their descendants suffering through intergenerational trauma.

“It affected my children, my grandchildren. So many are lost,” said survivor and mental health worker Audrey Eyahpaise of the Beardy’s & Okemasis Cree Nation.

The survivors say the Vatican is just as responsible as the local religious orders and dioceses.

October 18, 2018

“This has been a struggle for many years. They’ve been patient. They keep hearing broken promises,” said University of Saskatchewan Indigenous studies professor and Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation member Bonita Beatty.

“It’s a hierarchy. They report up to the Vatican. So yes, he [Pope Francis] is responsible for the various arms of his government. He can’t just wash his hands of it.”

Francis’s supporters say he has moved the church toward greater transparency, but a definitive dollar figure of the Roman Catholic Church’s wealth remains unavailable.

CBC News collected publicly available information to obtain a partial list of the church’s assets. They include:the Vatican, Vatican Bank, art and architecture, investments, and land. (CBC)

Tuesday March 29, 2022

March 29, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 29, 2022

Pope meets Canada Indigenous groups seeking apology for abuse of children

June 3, 2021

Pope Francis has heard first-hand the horrors of abuse committed at church-run residential schools in Canada, as Indigenous delegations pressed him for an apology.

Indigenous survivors are visiting the Vatican this week for meetings with the pope about the scandal that has rocked the Catholic church.

More than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered since last May at church-run schools attended by Canada’s Indigenous children as part of a government policy of forced assimilation.

“The pope listened … (he) heard just three of the many stories we have to share,” Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council, told journalists in front of St Peter’s Square. “While the time for acknowledgment, apology and atonement is long overdue, it is never too late to do the right thing.”

Wednesday September 5, 2018

September 4, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 5, 2018

As crisis envelops Catholic Church, is Pope Francis facing a ‘watershed moment’?

ROME For some, the accusations sending tremors through the Catholic Church are a concerted and dubious attack by ultraconservatives on Pope Francis. For others, the accusations are a credible attempt to expose the depths of the Vatican’s struggle to deal transparently with sexual abuse.

March 1, 2016

But at the centre of the divided church is Francis, whose reputation is being challenged by the unverified accusations that he and other Vatican higher-ups had known for years about the sexual misconduct allegations against a now-resigned cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

One week after the release of a scathing 7,000-word letter from Vatican ex-ambassador Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Vatican watchers say Francis — who has yet to directly address the veracity of the accusations — is facing the greatest challenge of his papacy.

Some Catholics have criticized him for what they describe as an insufficient response to the crisis. A few bishops have suggested that he call an extraordinary meeting to address sexual abuse in the church. And he faces pivotal decisions about whether to release abuse-related documents or green-light a who-knew-what investigation into McCarrick — with the possibility that such a probe could point fingers back to the Vatican. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Friday February 19, 2016

February 18, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 19, 2016

Pope Francis says Trump’s views on immigration ‘not Christian’

Pope Francis said Thursday that Donald Trump is “not Christian” if he intends to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump immediately fired back, saying it is disgraceful for a religious leader to question a person’s faith.

Wednesday February 10, 2016

Trump, a leading U.S. Republican presidential candidate, has promised to build a wall along the Mexican border from Texas to California and expel 11 million people who are in the country illegally if elected president.

The Pope’s comments en route home from Mexico came hours after he prayed at the Mexico-U.S. border for people who died trying to reach the United States.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said. “This is not in the Gospel.”

Not having heard Trump’s border plans independently, Francis said he’d “give him the benefit of the doubt.” But he added: “I’d just say that this man is not Christian if he said it this way.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, another Republican presidential contender, has also supported building a border wall, and joked that he will make Trump pay for it.

Trump, a Presbyterian, last week criticized Francis’ plans to pray at the border. He said the move was ill-informed and showed Francis to be a political figure being exploited by the Mexican government.

Rock Star Pope

“I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is. They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.”

On Thursday, he responded to the Pope’s comments during a campaign stop in Kiawah Island, S.C.

“No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,” he said. “They are using the Pope as a pawn and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, especially when so many lives are involved and when illegal immigration is so rampant.”

He also said the Mexican government has disparaged him to the Pope and separately invoked the Islamic State group, saying that if it attacks the Vatican, “I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened.” (Source: CBC News)

Social Media

As I turned the page on this story in my newspaper, I was greeted with an editorial cartoonby artist Graeme MacKay that took a different spin on this same piece of news. Mackay’s cartoon had Trump on one wall with a banner saying “No Illegal Mexicans” and the Pope is on another wall with three plaques saying, “No Gays. No Women Priests. No Apologies.”

Everyone deserves a reality check. We all have our own walls. Being a follower of Jesus has to allow for hard questions. We need to continually ask ourselves as Christians,

Where should I be building a bridge?

What walls do I need to tear down?

How can I be more holistic in my faith?

Source: Hamilton Commons

Friday June 12, 2015

June 11, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 12, 2015

Harper meets pope, does not seek apology on residential schools

Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised the troubling findings of the residential schools commission with Pope Francis at the Vatican Thursday, but appeared to have stopped short of inviting him to Canada to apologize.

Instead, Harper referred to a letter sent earlier in the week to the Vatican by his aboriginal affairs minister that merely informed the Holy See of the commission.

“Prime Minister Harper also drew attention to the letter sent by Minister (Bernard) Valcourt to the Holy See regarding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Harper’s office said without elaborating.

Harper’s spokesman did not respond to a request for clarification.

A separate readout from the Vatican did not mention the residential schools issue among the topics discussed.

Harper instead chose to pursue the theme that has dominated his six-day trip to Europe — his condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was at the Vatican on Wednesday for his private audience with Francis.

Harper went into the meeting facing calls to use the occasion to secure a papal apology for the church’s role in Canada’s residential school legacy.

Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, says the meeting will be a “prime opportunity” for the prime minister to raise the issue.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spoke to thousands of residential school students and documented their experiences, issued 94 recommendations last week that included a call for a papal apology on Canadian soil. (Source: Toronto Star)