Pope Francis rips ‘cancel culture,’ emphasizes need to combat climate change, global conflict

Pope Francis blasted “cancel culture” this week, calling it a form of “one-track thinking” that flattens history, stifles dialogue and undermines the unity of humanity.

“Under the guise of defending diversity,” the pontiff said, such thinking eliminates “all sense of identity, with the risk of silencing positions that defend a respectful and balanced understanding of various sensibilities.”

The pontiff warned, as part of his annual speech to foreign diplomats accredited to Vatican City, that the patterns of cancel culture also prevent people today from understanding the past.

“A kind of dangerous ‘one-track thinking’ is taking shape one constrained to deny history or, worse yet, to rewrite it in terms of present-day categories, whereas any historical situation must be interpreted in the light of a hermeneutics of that particular time, not that of today,” Francis said.

Along with being the world headquarters of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See is a political entity and has formal relations with 180 nations, including the United States. Francis urged those nations’ diplomats to engage in genuine dialogue as an alternative to cancel culture.

“Multilateral diplomacy is thus called to be truly inclusive, not canceling but cherishing the differences and sensibilities that have historically marked various peoples,” Francis explained.

Such inclusion, he added, will enable nations “to join together as one great family” and find “common solutions for the good of all” in light of coming global challenges.

The pope stressed the need to acknowledge “the existence of certain enduring values,” which, when accepted, “makes for a robust and solid social [ethic].”

He stressed “the right to life, from conception to its natural end, and the right to religious freedom” as emblematic of those “enduring values.”

Francis also called for the world to unite in combating the effects of climate change, citing “the urgent need to care for our common home.” He also spoke of “the urgent need to find solutions to endless conflicts that at times appear as true proxy wars,” citing conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya.

The pope also called for progress in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, saying the two sides need to “rebuild mutual trust and resume speaking directly to each other.”

He also decried the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and declared it “important” that the current nuclear negotiations with Iran regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, “achieve positive results.”

But it was Francis’ denunciation of cancel culture that garnered the most global attention from his 38-minute address to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps.

Such “canceling” has hit the Catholic Church in recent years.

In 2020, activists at the California state capitol tore down a statue of St. Junipero Serra, the Franciscan missionary who founded the first mission in the state in 1769 at San Diego.

A 2021 bill, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California Democrat, officially removed the Serra statue from the capitol grounds and replaced it with one of an American Indian, some of whom claimed the saint participated in the enslavement of indigenous peoples.

His defenders claim the priest worked to protect the Indians from harm from the secular Spanish government and its conquistadors. Francis canonized St. Junipero in 2015.