Pope Francis's remarks will have resonated with Italian listeners
Nick Cohen takes Pope Francis to task for prejudice in referring to the problem of masonic lobbies. ("Don't be fooled. Pope by name, pope by nature", Comment). But the pope's remarks would have resonated with Italian listeners, sadly familiar with the role of masonic lodges in Italian political corruption.
And the older among what Nick calls "Anglo-Saxon readers" will remember the case of Roberto Calvi, the Italian banker and member of illegal masonic lodge P2, found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in June 1982. As the P2 lodge also operated in Argentina, it would have been familiar to Pope Francis. The pope was not prejudiced, just better informed than Nick Cohen. But then he is the pope.
Robert Pellegrinetti
London NW5
Nick Cohen fails to mention the fact that the Catholic church gives shelter and support to HIV/Aids victims, lepers, the sick and the old in the developing world more than any other religion or government.
F Rice
Belfast
Thanks to Nick Cohen for his brilliant demolition of some Roman Catholics' depiction of the new pope as some kind of liberal. The Vatican has been in league with far-right reaction almost since its inception. In our time, it has conspired with fascists, Nazis and rightwing European conservatives in Britain, Italy and Spain against ordinary working people. The Vatican backed the fascist insurgency of Franco against the democratic Spanish republic and during the Hitler war, Pius XII could have saved the lives of Jews in deadliest peril. "Crush the vile thing," said Voltaire of the Catholic church of his time: today, his injunction seems even more irresistible.
Douglas Rome
Dumfries
As an Anglican who has spent decades dithering about "swimming the Tiber", I was delighted to read Nick Cohen's attack on Pope Francis.
My delight has nothing to do with the quality of the piece. Cohen doesn't know what he's writing about. He evidently believes that a pope can get up in the morning and decide over breakfast to reverse a dogma or two. He is clueless about Christian (not just Catholic) objection to freemasonry in general, and the issues around the Italian P2 lodge in particular. And he's incoherent about the "breathless Italian press".
The allegation against Monsignor Ricca was in fact made by Sandro Magister, "vaticanista" of L'Espresso and almost certainly the world's most knowledgeable journalist about the Vatican, who was laying his career on the line by doing so.
No, I rejoice at Cohen's spittle-flecked snarl of hatred against the pontiff because it shows that the honeymoon is over: the Observer has at last realised that the pope is Catholic. Didn't someone say something like: "Blessed are you when men revile you and speak all manner of evil against you falsely"?
Alan T Harrison
Walsall
I have been an Observer reader for more than 40 years. I cannot be the only practising socialist Catholic who despises fascism, communism and all forms of religious bigotry who reads the best paper in the country. However, I, along with many other readers, I'm sure, find Nick Cohen's regular attacks on the faith I have attempted to practise for over 60 years highly offensive.
James Marron
Keighley
West Yorkshire
Nick Cohen blames the pope for the Magdalen laundries in Ireland, for not singlehandedly changing the whole doctrine on homosexuality, for referring to freemasonry and, above all, for being a Catholic!
Catholics know that the church is a huge and lumberingly slow organisation. This man has been in office for a few months. Give him a chance; he doesn't seem to have made a bad start.
Dr Tom Woodman
Reading
