A temporary swimming pool paid for with public money and installed outside one of Berlin’s leading State-subsidised theatres has been set aside for “Black communities” on August 14, restricting access solely on the basis of race.
The Volksbad, set up in front of the Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte, central Berlin, is due to operate exclusively for “Black communities” from 12 noon until 6pm.
The session is organised in partnership with Each One Teach One (EOTO), a publicly funded NGO that runs programmes for people of African origin from its base in the African Quarter of Wedding, northern Berlin. EOTO has listed the visit as part of its summer holiday programme for Black children and young people.
After 6pm the pool reopens to the general public. The Volksbad normally runs from 12 noon to 8pm, leaving two hours of general access that day.
The theatre originally advertised the facility as free and “open to all” who wished to cool off in the summer heat, with no identity checks required.
Its website stated that during the reserved period the pool would be “exclusively open for Black communities” and asked the public “to respect this collective self-designation and the associated spaces”.
Following criticism the wording was softened on the evening of August 11 to note that the facility was “reserved for EOTO e.V.”. EOTO itself has described the event as an open-air swimming pool “entirely for us alone”.
Registration for the exclusive hours is handled through the organisation rather than the theatre’s ordinary booking system. The listing invites Black, African and Afro-diasporic people aged between 15 and 27.
The temporary public pool costs around €300,000 and is financed from the Volksbühne’s budget. The theatre itself receives more than €20 million a year in public subsidies.
The 25-metre pool opened on August 7 and is due to remain in place until October 1.
Artistic director Matthias Lilienthal had presented the pool as a practical response to Berlin’s shortage of municipal swimming facilities and as an inclusive urban gesture. The theatre describes it as the first urban initiative of his tenure.
Critics have called the arrangement racial discrimination at a publicly funded site. Alternative for Germany (AfD) said on Facebook that “open racial segregation” was being practised in public space with the money of German taxpayers.
Questions remain about how the racial restriction will be enforced on the day.
Germany’s General Equal Treatment Act (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz), in force since 2006, prohibits discrimination on grounds of race or ethnic origin in access to goods and services available to the public.
It does allow for so-called “positive action” to compensate for “existing disadvantages”. The German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency lists “separate visiting hours in swimming pools” as examples of positive action on its website, though this has been typically used for women to swim where certain cultural norms proved to be problematic. Such measures must also be proportionate.
EOTO receives funding from Berlin Senate departments and from the federal “Demokratie leben!” programme, which has supported the organisation since 2017 through the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.
The Volksbühne has not issued a detailed justification beyond the revised programme listing. The Berliner Zeitung said its press enquiry had gone unanswered and that neither Lilienthal nor the two curators of the Volksbad programme had commented.
The NCF panel discuss reports that if Labour lowers the voting age to 16, Labour could lose 49 constituencies, in part due to the Muslim youth vote, which would go to pro-Gaza independent Muslim Vote candidates or to the Green Party.
Statue of Our Lady in Konotopie, Poland. Wikimedia Commons, Pko, CC-BY-SA-4.0
The tallest statue of the Virgin Mary in Europe will be consecrated in Poland.
On the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (August 15), the 55.6-meter-tall (180 feet) statue in the Polish town of Konotopie will be consecrated by Bishop Krzysztof Wętkowski after 1 1/2 years of construction.
Even before the official opening, visitors have been flocking to the statue daily, said the leader of the small town, Mieczysław Grębicki, in an interview with Euronews last Monday.
The sculpture consists of a statue of the Virgin Mary that, at 40.8 meters (133 feet), is about two meters taller than the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. With its 15-meter-high (49 feet) pedestal shaped like a crown, the structure stands 55.6 meters (182.4 feet) tall. However, while it is the largest Marian statue in Europe, the world’s tallest depiction of the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of All Asia – Tower of Peace in Batangas City, Philippines, which stands at 98.15 meters (322 feet) tall.
The statue in Konotopie was funded by entrepreneur and multimillionaire Roman Karkosik and his wife. He lives just over a mile from the town of Konotopie and can see the statue directly from his estate. He told the Financial Times that he had the statue erected “out of gratitude to Mary.” The exact cost of construction is unknown. Estimates put the cost at around 23 million euros ($26.5 million).
Konotopie was chosen as the location for the statue by the Karkosiks because of its proximity to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows, which is famous for housing a miraculous wooden statue of Mary. The statue and sanctuary are known for reported healings and graces, including miraculous recoveries from serious illnesses. The shrine, which has been a local pilgrimage site since the 19th century, was reconstructed and expanded thanks to the funding of Karkosik and his wife in 2011.
New Premier flip-flopping on the issue, accused of throwing his Justice Secretary ‘under the bus’.
In Britain, we’ve come to the point where ‘all the top police officers in the country’ are calling for constable Andrew Harper’s killers to stay behind bars.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Andy Burnham is under heavy criticism for appearing to every day have a different opinion on this issue.
BREAKING: 50 police chiefs have written an open letter calling on Andy Burnham to prevent the release of PC Andrew Harper's killers.
“Every police chief in the UK has signed an unprecedented joint letter demanding Andy Burnham do everything possible to stop the early release of PC Andrew Harper’s killers.
In a joint letter, 50 chief constables united to tell the Prime Minister to examine ‘every lawful option’ to ensure Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole serve their full sentences.”
🚨 BREAKING: All police chief constables in the UK have called for Andy Burnham to ensure PC Andrew Harper's killers are not released early
"We make this request in memory of PC Andrew Harper, in support of his family, friends, colleagues and the communities he served" pic.twitter.com/I5MCl2q7nG
“Earlier on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said he was ‘increasingly confident’ that he could stop Cole and Bowers walking free early after changing his position on the releases several times.
However, sources at the Ministry of Justice accused the Prime Minister of throwing Alex Norris, the Justice Secretary, ‘under the bus’ by ordering him to examine how the releases could be blocked.”
I understand the depth of public concern about the potential early release of those involved with the killing of PC Andrew Harper – and I share it.
I fully appreciate the anguish of Andrew’s family and, more broadly, of all those victims and their families who may see those who…
Government minister Angela Rayner confirmed on #BBCBreakfast that Prime Minister Andy Burnham has told his Justice Secretary to find a way to exclude two of PC Andrew Harper's killers from an early release scheme designed to ease prison… pic.twitter.com/PLz7CQJJoU
Farah Ahmed confirmed in 2010 that she had left the now-proscribed extremist group. UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The University of Cambridge is facing fresh scrutiny after it emerged that a former member of the now-proscribed extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir was given a role as assistant research professor in the institution’s faculty of education last year.
Farah Ahmed, who confirmed in 2010 that she had left the organisation, initially joined Cambridge as a senior research associate in 2024 before taking up her current post.
She was involved in supervising postgraduate research and teaching undergraduates.
The appointment heaps further pressure on Vice-Chancellor Prof Deborah Prentice, who is already contending with the fallout from the Jason Arday plagiarism affair and an employment tribunal ruling that found she had “shut down” a whistleblower’s grievances.
Dr Ahmed authored a Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet entitled Education and Identity, first written in 2002 and republished in 2017.
In this work, she reportedly described “western education” as a “threat” to Muslim communities in Britain.
She is also alleged to have criticised British schools for presenting “polygamy or marriage under the age of 16” as “archaic and discriminatory to women,” while branding democracy a “corrupt tradition.”
Following her arrival at Cambridge, she helped organise a conference examining science’s role as “part of a wider modernist and colonial project.”
She additionally reportedly developed a resource called “How Islamic is my school?”
GB News has approached Dr Ahmed for comment.
A Cambridge spokesman said: “We acknowledge the employment tribunal’s judgment of Aug 10 2026 and are carefully reviewing it. We will now take time to reflect on the findings in detail.”
A spokesman for the Faculty of Education said: “The Faculty is committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law. All members of our community are encouraged to exercise their rights to freedom of speech, including to challenge ideas or theories they disagree with through scholarship and robust debate.”
The revelation compounds difficulties for Cambridge stemming from an investigation into Jason Arday, who served as professor of sociology of education within the same faculty as Dr Ahmed.
Mr Arday stepped down last Wednesday amid numerous plagiarism allegations and doubts about the veracity of his personal narrative.
He attributed his apparent copying to autism-related mimicry and insisted his departure should not “be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me.”
Critics have accused the university of compromising its academic standards to appoint Mr Arday as its youngest-ever black professor, allegedly driven by a desire to bolster its diversity, equality and inclusion record.
Prof Prentice, the first American to serve as Cambridge’s vice-chancellor, faced additional criticism on Tuesday when an employment tribunal found she had repeatedly dismissed complaints from Prof Wyn Evans, an astrophysicist who had raised concerns about the alleged bullying of a colleague at the Institute of Astronomy.
The panel identified a “clear pattern” of suppressing his grievances and shielding the university from potential damage.
The 21 Group, an anti-bullying campaign led by Prof Evans, declared Prof Prentice’s position “untenable,” questioning whether she is “actually in control of the university she is supposed to lead.”
Trainee police officer Mohammad Hassan has been suspended by Greater Manchester Police over being charged in relation to the alleged kidnap and rape of a woman in her 20s while he was off duty over the weekend.
Greater Manchester Police said they have brought charges against a student officer in relation to the “rape and kidnap of a woman in Manchester while off-duty over the weekend”. The 23-year-old trainee, Mohammad Hassan, who was described by the force as being “of Asian-Pakistani ethnicity” has been suspended from the police.
The BBC reports police responded to an emergency 999 call on Saturday night, in which a woman could be heard in distress inside a moving vehicle, Hassan was subsequently arrested in West Yorkshire after a police pursuit on the M62 motorway.
A woman in her 20s was assisted by officers at the scene. The Daily Telegraphstates the suspect was allegedly driving his personal vehicle during the pursuit, not a police car.
Hassan appeared at Stockport Magistrates’ Court for a short hearing on Saturday. The charges of oral rape, kidnap, strangulation, sexual assault, theft of a mobile phone and dangerous driving were read out and he spoke only to confirm his name and address. The judge said because of the severity of the charges, the case would be referred up to the Crown Court, and remanded the suspect into custody.
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Dexter said in a statement on his force charging one of its own trainees: “I understand, and share, the feeling among the public and our thousands of hard-working, decent staff who will have seen this news. Proceedings are underway and necessary action will be decisively taken within the regulations”. Dexter further stated a review of the recruitment process of Hassan showed the police force had not found anything during vetting about the suspended officer.
The next hearing at Manchester Crown Court is due on September 15th.
Europe today resembles a civilization that has forgotten not only what it once was, but why it ever existed. There is something tragic, Shakespearean, about watching the slow eradication of nations that produced Aristotle and Aquinas, Dante and Da Vinci, Newton and Einstein, the Renaissance and the industrial age. Andre Rieu playing the violin while the continent burns.
Spoiled by prosperity generated by their entrepreneurs. Lulled into a deceptive sense of safety created by the rise of America’s military power after WWII. Deceived by their elites into seeing their shared cultural values as embarrassing relics of pre-globalist times. Opening the gates to migrants from dysfunctional societies, with no opportunities or demands for assimilation.
That’s not compassion. It’s civilizational malpractice. Trump has sounded a rude but life-saving wake-up call. It will, of course, give Europe’s intellectuals one more reason to hate “orange man.” It’s a klaxon their ruling class prefers to muffle. Europe risks “civilizational erasure!” The warning is not hyperbolic. It’s a factual account of a tragedy of biblical proportions.
European leaders are appalled that Washington finally said out loud what their citizens whisper to one another at kitchen tables, pubs, and churches: “We are being replaced.” Replaced not by race or ethnicity. Such superficial markers don’t determine the fate of nations. Replaced by cultures shaped by political corruption, violence, misogyny, and contempt for human rights.
Uncounted multitudes have fled the misery of their homelands only to bring with them the very attitudes and habits that produced the cesspools they are leaving behind. It’s not that European elites embrace the uninvited illegal aliens’ values. They just despise their own. A civilization ashamed of itself cannot ask others to assimilate into anything meaningful. And so they don’t.
What are the consequences of handling immigration as virtue signaling? Neighborhoods transformed into lawless zones where police fear to patrol. Women and girls who must rethink their safety in public spaces that were once secure. Parallel societies that reject European norms instead of joining them. Cities burdened by criminal networks imported from collapsed states.
It’s easy to blame the EU governments. The deeper problem is the voters who supinely accept the tyranny of their bureaucracies, outsourcing everything that shapes their present and future to people who neither love their nations nor understand them. Europeans have become spectators in their own homes, sedated by comfort, terrified that resistance could make them seem impolite.
Europe’s decline cannot be reversed by adjusting migration quotas or rewriting climate regulations, by another summit, a different directive, or new bureaucracy. Europeans must choose public servants who believe that their civilization is worth defending. The greatest weakness of Europe’s conservative movement is not a lack of ideas, but a lack of unity.
In Britain, the fault lines on the right are plain to see. The Conservative Party has Kemi Badenoch. Nigel Farage leads Reform. The face of Restore is Rupert Lowe. Each appeals to a different instinct within the broader conservative electorate, yet each competes for the same pool of voters. The consequences are fragmentation and weakness.
Badenoch’s measured style is winning her respect among mainstream Conservatives. For some Reform and Restore supporters, restraint is too often mistaken for lack of principles. Some Conservative voters see Farage as the man who has spent years dismantling the center-right. Reform voters view Lowe as a rival who threatens to divide their movement, etc., etc.
Across Europe, the right has repeatedly demonstrated that its greatest adversary is often itself. In Austria, coalition negotiations between the ÖVP and the FPÖ collapsed amid disputes over power and strategy. In Germany, the CDU faces pressure from the AfD and internal tensions over how far it should move to the right without sacrificing its broader electoral appeal.
France has long witnessed competition between the traditional Gaullist right and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. That rivalry has repeatedly fragmented the conservative vote and handed victory to socialists and globalists. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ PVV, the VVD, and newer right-wing movements have likewise competed as much with one another as with the Left.
Political movements seldom fail because they lack conviction. More often, they fail because ambition eclipses principles. Rivals on the same side spend more energy attacking one another than persuading the wider electorate. Voters rarely reward perpetual civil war. They prefer clarity and the confidence that those seeking power are capable of exercising it together.
While the center-right remains divided by personalities and party rivalries, the progressive establishment continues to expand the power of the state, weaken national sovereignty, push woke policies, and burden enterprise with rules and taxes. Elections cannot be won by fighting those who share your principles more fiercely than those who oppose them.
The West gave the world free markets and the rule of law. It is now plagued by interventionism and redistribution. This is where Europeans can learn a lesson from the countries that endured decades of Marxist propaganda aimed at homogenizing all ethnicities. That’s where healthy nationalism and traditional conservatism were resurrected in the ruins of socialism since 1989.
When U.S. officials warned that some NATO members may soon be “majority non-European,” commentators shrieked about “far-right talking points.” But statistical projections are not ideological. They are math, convenient or not. A civilization can survive economic hardships, wars, and plagues. What it cannot survive is the belief that it is evil and has no right to exist.
America has adopted the ‘tough love’ approach: rebuild your militaries. Reclaim your identity. Relearn the moral confidence that once made the West the envy of the world. NATO must be saved before it collapses under the weight of Europe’s own doubts. Europe must shoulder its responsibilities, not hide behind American power while sneering at American values.
Europe’s modern ideology, post-national technocracy, is a fantasy. It insists that culture is interchangeable, borders are outdated, data analysts can plan our lives, and values are optional. It assumes that the millions imported from authoritarian or tribal societies will be singing kumbaya because people are inherently good. Millennia of human experience, however, beg to differ.
A continent that no longer reads the Bible, pays only lip service to the rule of law, sabotages the family, tries to erase national identity, suffocates free enterprise, and denies personal responsibility cannot magically transform newcomers into citizens who believe in those things. But, as Hayek reminds us, “In social evolution nothing is inevitable but thinking makes it so.”
Decline is not destiny. Civilizations fall when they choose to. Europe may be sleepwalking toward disaster, but it has not yet crossed the point of no return. The seeds of renewal are visible. Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and the Netherlands are turning against their woke elites. Millions of ordinary Europeans are rediscovering their heritage and rejecting multiculturalism.
The movie Citizen Vigilante, promoted by Elon Musk, shows one possible scenario. Unsurprisingly, it got 20 million viewers in a single day. We should do everything in our power to avoid it. If Europe finds the courage to embrace its identity rooted in Christianity, reason, liberty, and the dignity of the individual, the recent cultural decline could turn into the next Renaissance.
The Higher Administrative Court of Saxony-Anhalt has confirmed that membership of or support for the state’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) association can justify the revocation of weapons permits.
In three final decisions published on August 10 — case numbers 3 L 44/25, 3 L 45/25 and 3 L 51/25 — the court’s third senate rejected applications for leave to appeal against earlier rulings by the Magdeburg Administrative Court.
The cases involved current and former members or supporters of the AfD state association, which the state Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified as confirmed right-wing extremist since November 2023, having listed it as a suspected case in January 2021.
The police authorities had revoked the individuals’ firearms licences.
The court held that the plaintiffs lack the “reliability under weapons law” required by section 5(2) no. 3 of the Weapons Act (Waffengesetz).
That provision states that a person is generally considered unreliable if they belong to or support an association that pursues aims directed against the constitutional order.
The judges made clear that the rule applies to ordinary party members as well as active supporters and does not require a formal ban on the party by the Federal Constitutional Court.
The claimants had argued the reverse. They invoked the “party privilege” set out in the Basic Law and said disadvantages under weapons law could follow only once the Federal Constitutional Court had banned the party outright.
They also disputed that the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt was directed against the constitution. The court rejected both arguments, stating that neither authorities nor administrative courts pronounce a party ban in weapons-law proceedings and that the legislation sets general reliability requirements applying to all citizens alike.
In its reasoning the court stated that the state need not wait until offences or harm have occurred before acting to protect the public from the extreme dangers of weapons. Risks, it said, may be minimised in advance.
It found that the AfD state association’s overall orientation is directed against human dignity, through the blanket devaluation and exclusion of people with a migration background or of Muslim faith, and against the principle of democracy, through systematic disparagement of state institutions and comparisons with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or the Nazi regime. The judges based that assessment on speeches, publications and social media posts.
An “objectively combative-aggressive attitude” towards constitutional fundamentals does not require physical violence. Gradual undermining of the basic order, the deliberate stirring of fears or the systematic degradation of population groups is sufficient.
No special circumstances that would justify an exception, such as active distancing from the association’s stance, were established in the three cases.
The decisions give authorities in Saxony-Anhalt a secure legal basis for further action. A court spokesman said the only remaining route for those affected is a constitutional complaint in Karlsruhe.
The Magdeburg Administrative Court had already dismissed the claimants’ challenges in March 2025 after examining material collected by the state constitutional protection authority.
The same senate had reached the opposite conclusion in April 2023, ruling that classification of the state association as a suspected case did not on its own justify revoking a licence.
Similar classifications of AfD state associations exist in Saxony and Thuringia. Elsewhere the party is treated by the domestic intelligence service as a suspected case.
The decisions come against a backdrop of intensified political contest ahead of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6.
According to reporting by Die Welt, cited by Junge Freiheit, the Greens and the Left party are committing record sums to their campaigns in Saxony-Anhalt and neighbouring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which votes on September 20.
The Greens plan to spend €1.5 million in Saxony-Anhalt, more than double the previous record and the highest figure in the state’s history, and a further €800,000 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Saxony-Anhalt sum breaks down into about €1.2 million for the state association and €300,000 for district branches, out of €2.3 million committed across the two states. The Mecklenburg-Vorpommern budget was raised from €350,000 agreed at the end of 2025.
Greens lead candidate Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz said the anti-fascist strategy answered a need in civil society. Junge Freiheit reported that the two parties are campaigning less on their own policies than against the AfD.
The Left is allocating €562,000 and €600,000 respectively, both described as record amounts. The CDU and the AfD declined to give campaign figures.
An INSA poll for Bild, published on August 10, put the AfD on 42 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, 20 points ahead of the CDU on 22 per cent.
The Greens’ campaign slogan there is: “Five per cent Greens in the state parliament means zero per cent AfD government.”
Several other parties are hovering at or below the 5 per cent threshold. INSA put the Greens on 4 per cent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) on 4 per cent and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on 5 per cent.
Under the state’s proportional system, votes for parties that fail to clear the threshold are discarded, so the remaining seats are redistributed among those that enter. The state parliament has at least 83 seats.
On those figures, and assuming the BSW clears the bar, the AfD would take roughly 47 to 48 per cent of the seats, short of an absolute majority, yet close enough that a further rise for the AfD or the failure of one more smaller party could tip it over the line. Were the BSW also to fall short, the AfD would hold an absolute majority on those numbers alone.
Residents of the German city of Düren watched in alarm on Sunday evening as up to 20 people fought uncontrollably in the street near Bonner Platz, a central location in the North Rhine-Westphalia city. Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel has also responded to the video of the incident, which shows women shoved to the ground and victims mercilessly beaten while they lie defenseless.
🇩🇪🔴BREAKING: Incredible footage out of Germany shows migrants attacking each other with axes, hammers, and bats in the middle of the street.
The barbaric battle in the city of Düren shows women knocked down and victims beaten after they are already on the ground.
The clash erupted around 6:50 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2026. Bystanders managed to separate the groups before police arrived.
According to police, participants used “striking tools.” The video clearly shows the attacks, with men casually walking around with axes after the attack concluded.
A second video from street level is even more shocking, with victims covered in blood while witnesses scream in fear.
🇩🇪🔴 JUST IN: Another video of the brutal violence in the streets of Germany has been released, with suspects beating each other with axes and bats.
6 were seriously injured in the attacks.
The shocking video highlights the disaster of mass immigration.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel has also commented on the incident on X, writing: “A ‘men’s group’ in Düren engaged in a violent altercation—armed with a hammer and an axe, six people were seriously injured. The danger to our own citizens grows daily, while the CDU-led federal government does nothing. Anyone who commits crimes in Germany must leave the country immediately. Only a strong AfD will ensure that!”
Her post has been censored and cannot be embedded.
Police confirmed six people sustained serious injuries and were taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals. Two others who were also seriously hurt refused medical treatment. No one was reported to be in life-threatening condition.
Officers arrested a 22-year-old man from Düren and a 23-year-old from Cologne. It remains unclear why the street battle broke out, according to German news outlet t-online.
A police spokesman told reporters that the circulating videos are valuable for the investigation. Detectives are working to identify additional suspects and are appealing for witnesses.
Düren is close to the city of Cologne and has a population of about 94,000.
POPE LEO XIV grants an audience to PATTI SMITH. Screengrab youtube
On July 31, 2026, Pope Leo XIV met with American rock musician, poet, and artist Patti Smith, known as the “Godmother of Punk,” during a 40-minute private audience at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Both are from Chicago. The meeting was attended by Father Antonio Spadaro. There are several official photos and a video of the encounter.
This harmless encounter – I imagine it mainly involved an exchange of pleasantries, with hardly anything of great significance for the Church – raises questions for me.
For a long time now, I have personally been troubled by the fact that, since John Paul II, popes have increasingly spoken in a purely informal manner on all sorts of occasions (e.g., on an airplane or by the roadside, as Pope Leo XIV recently did in Castel Gandolfo). They give spontaneous interviews and express personal opinions. They are accessible to all sorts of people who want to have their picture taken with them. Given his workload and responsibilities, does a pope have nothing more important to do than grant such private audiences (which are especially popular when the petitioners come from show business or have some cultural or elite relevance)? Such appearances reinforce the impression among the secular public that the pope is, at heart, simply another member of the international establishment. In any case, the humble fisherman from Galilee did not know such “glamour.” Nor did Paul seek the spotlight; rather, he entered the Areopagus in Athens to preach. I am not talking about protocol obligations and significant state visits.
Among those who have been granted the privilege of a private audience may be people like Emma Bonino, who spent her entire life at odds with Church doctrine. Pope Francis even paid her a private visit at her apartment on November 5, 2024. However, the pope’s role is not to provide individual pastoral care. Nor should he teach through images, but through clear words.
Not to be forgotten are this pope’s repeated and lengthy conversations and phone calls with the atheist Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica. From these, Scalfari reconstructed ominous interviews from memory. On several occasions, the Vatican had to distance itself from alleged statements attributed to the pope. For Pope Francis, this approach – of hinting at things while remaining reserved on doctrinal matters – had almost become a method.
Above all, I would like to point out: when a pope receives such people in private audience, he cannot, out of courtesy, publicly distance himself from them afterward. As a result, such a reception comes across to many as a trivialization of what these individuals stand for. In this way, the pope himself obscures the Church’s position and – depending on the circumstances – even causes offense to the faithful. These audiences take on all the more false significance the less the pope simultaneously upholds the unabridged doctrine of the faith, publicly corrects the false views of these people, and puts a stop to abuses (cf. the exploitation of private audiences with the pope for his own pro-LGBT agenda by the Jesuit James Martin).
I believe that as a result, recent popes have lost authority and spiritual capital. Their personalities (spin doctors need images) take center stage. Their private inclinations and details irrelevant to their office become messages to the mainstream and take center stage. We see Pope Benedict at the piano or Pope Francis visiting a record store in Rome in a Fiat that’s far too small for his corpulence, just to indulge a personal whim.
Popes certainly have more important things to do than pay for their hotel rooms out of their own wallets, as Francis did at the beginning of his pontificate. Do they even have enough time for that? Do they have enough time to reflect on matters in prayer, to spend long periods before God, so that they may be guided by Him? Do they have enough time to read, study documents, and prepare statements in which they truly teach – teach authoritatively and unambiguously – rather than offering speculations that are of no use to us?
But no, they must constantly appear at audiences, shake hands, and receive people indiscriminately. At papal Masses, they themselves take center stage as a sort of “church celebrity,” pushing Christ – “the actual subject” – into the background. The papal throne towers over the altar. The Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Square should really serve as an encounter with the Lord, and not be a spectacle featuring His servant, the pope – to put it somewhat polemically.
I cannot comprehend this. Collections of interviews, spontaneous remarks of varying quality, personal appearances at all sorts of events – such as the blessing of an ice block at a climate conference in Rome – all these things do more harm than good to the office. They serve only those who like to use the pope to further their own agendas. And the popes have recently been lending themselves to such things. You see them test-driving the first electric Ferrari for the media and to the delight of business leaders, and much more. Here, too, one should pay attention to the ambivalence of the images!
For me, there is a lack of distance – in the positive sense of the word. I’m not talking about aloofness, but about dignity. This is often emphasized more by silence than by speech – by speaking at the right moment, and then in a warm and engaging manner, using few, unambiguous, and clear words. Pope Francis demonstrated this particularly toward traditionalists and members of the Mafia, or in the context of migration. He was able to clearly condemn abortion while warmly welcoming its proponents and even appointing them to significant Vatican commissions. This, too, undermines the Church’s doctrinal position.
Discernment is needed in the spirit of tradition (not in the spirit of so-called “new synodality”). But the popes have almost no time for this. They spend far too much time on audiences, greetings, handshaking, and travel. I see the danger of activism. It masks the lack of a clear condemnation of heretical positions, which are also held by bishops (cf. The Synodal Way). These positions must be clearly identified, and their proponents admonished or removed from office. Burning issues such as the liturgical question are being put on the back burner. As advisors to the pope, the cardinals do not really have a say.
St. Pope John Paul II – perhaps unwillingly – gave his public appearances as pope the character of a superstar, especially through World Youth Days. In 2003, John Paul II published the “Roman Triptych—Meditations,” a new cycle of poems. The Vatican documented its official presentation on March 6, 2003, as if it held significance comparable to the major encyclicals from the same pen. Even as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict published collections of interviews, a practice he continued as pope. With his valuable books on Jesus, he did not intend to teach authoritatively as pope, but rather to make an academic (?) contribution, as he had done in the past when he was a university professor.
All of this is unusual for popes, who are expected to teach authoritatively. Pope Francis produced several autobiographies at once – a format previously unthinkable for popes. Moreover, he did not write them himself, as one might assume. Through all these innovations, the media portrayal of his personality and style took on almost greater significance than what he taught or was supposed to teach. In the age of the media, there was a concerted effort to come across well. This was also evident with Pope Francis. Any cracks in his image were quickly patched up by the media (cf. his brusque reaction in St. Peter’s Square when a Chinese woman grabbed his hand and pulled him toward her on December 31, 2019, and the “mea culpa” that became necessary during the Angelus the following Sunday).
But for the LORD to shine through, other things – the irrelevant, the overly personal – must take a back seat. The media, however, love to turn precisely the latter into a main attraction: the swimming pool or tennis court at Castel Gandolfo, the black shoes beneath the white cassock, the worn leather briefcase from days gone by, Benedict’s cute cat, the piano, the Fiat, the Ferrari. The list just keeps getting longer. Who cares about that when popes are teachers of the truth? A revealed truth!
I don’t think they need to constantly undertake elaborate and grueling trips for that (for the truth) – trips that physically exhaust them – when a single sentence from their lips can circle the globe in the blink of an eye without them even moving. How much personal energy is lost this way – energy that is then lacking elsewhere (also due to their constant absence): in leading the Curia; in meeting with people who are truly relevant to the pope’s decision-making; in staff meetings to prepare sound statements and coordinate the various dicasteries. Their presence is not required merely to observe processes initiated by others, to let them run their course without providing leadership, to act as students themselves, or even to be good listeners. Are they not the teachers of Christendom, whose words everyone awaits? Do they not sit on the Chair of St. Peter, and not on some other chair? Are they not needed above all in Rome?
The popes have become all too human in the exercise of their office. Their personality, not their office, takes center stage. This may seem appealing to some who are eager to get a photo with them, perhaps to exploit it later for their heretical views. The mainstream wants to see them as approachable: as ordinary people just like the rest of us. Pope Francis, in particular, wanted the latter. For this reason, on March 25, 2017, in Milan – much to the annoyance of many believers – he spontaneously used a nearby portable chemical toilet, which his spin doctor, Antonio Spadaro, naturally put into the proper context afterward. Most recently, he had his caregiver push him in a wheelchair through the bustling St. Peter’s Basilica while dressed in everyday clothes, as if he were just some elderly neighbor (with all due respect for his terminal illness!) For me, this was yet another historic low point for the papacy.
Popes, after all, are not people like us. They should have respect for their office and, as guardians of the Church’s doctrine, refuse to let their personality take center stage like John the Baptist, who wanted to be nothing more than a voice – albeit one that speaks the truth. In contrast, his own profile was of no consequence. Popes should remain mindful of this: that it is not their personality that matters, but their office. That is a cross to bear. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). They are merely the friends and representatives of the Bridegroom, not the Bridegroom Himself. Only the latter is of significance and interest!
