Francis’ Autobiography Mocks Clerical Vestments Under the Cloak of Humility

David Martin | The Daily Knight

Among the many aberrations of Pope Francis has been his contempt of clerical vestments, which he dubs “ostentatious.” In his newly released autobiography Hope, he criticizes tradition-minded clergy who render glory to God by wearing the traditional garbs of the priesthood, saying that their adherence to "ostentatious styles" reveals a “rigidity” of mind that in some cases may even reach a level of “mental instability” and “emotional deviation." 

If their loyalty to Christ is "deviate" and "unstable," what shall we say of Francis who goes out of his way to publicly bless homosexuals who have opposite gender parts sown under their trashy jeans? Is this not deviate?

According to Francis, the great popes, bishops, and cardinals of the past 2000 years were a brood of pompous jackasses flaunting their feathers. He blesses “transgenders” and hails the rebellious Martin Luther as "a faithful witness to the Gospel" while punishing and defrocking the true prelates of the Church for their humble witness of Christ.

Their “rigidity,” he writes, “is often accompanied by elegant and costly tailoring, lace, fancy trimmings, rochets,” which he describes as amounting to “clerical ostentation.”

He adds:

“These ways of dressing up sometimes conceal mental imbalance, emotional deviation, behavioral difficulties, a personal problem that may be exploited.” If the holy ones of Christ have “deviated,” what shall we say of Francis who has deviated from the Faith?

In his autobiography, Francis stresses how he avoided the trimmings and finery of papal tradition after he was “elected” in 2013.

“They offered me a beautiful golden cross and I said: ‘I have this nickel silver one from my episcopal ordination, I’ve been carrying it for 20 years,’” he writes.

Francis also turned down the papal red shoes favored by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, saying, “The red shoes? No, I have orthopedic shoes. I’m rather flat footed.”  

He also writes:

“Likewise, I didn’t want the velvet mozzetta, nor the linen rochet…They were not for me. Two days later they told me I would have to change my trousers, wear white ones. They made me laugh. ‘I don’t want to be an ice-cream seller,’ I said.”

Francis said that the pure white garments make him “laugh,” but it is not Christ who he is laughing at? Christ commands that his prelates wear the royal garments of the priesthood, but in a flaunt of fake humility Francis says, “I will not!”

If in fact a priest dresses up for show it indeed is bad, but it is the clerical actors of the Church who do this with their antics and modernist innovations, not the tradition-minded priests. Any good done for show is bad, as we often see done today. In some parishes they spend endless hours bagging and boxing free food for the poor people in Mexico but often times this “good” amounts to nothing more than a “tinkling cymbal” that “profits me nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1,3) because it is done to “be seen by men.” (Mt. 6:5)

It is this pretense that Francis accuses our loyal prelates of. Frédéric Martel, the French author of In the Closet of the Vatican, states:

“He is talking about cardinals like the American Raymond Burke and the late Raffaele Martino who have used the cappa magna, a robe which can be ten metres long and requires helpers to hold it so you can walk.”

According to Martel, Francis repeatedly told Burke that “wearing the cappa magna in Rome is out of the question.”

Cardinal Burke, former head of the Vatican Tribunal and longtime champion of conservativism in the Catholic Church challenged Francis' 2016 decision to end the ban on Communion for remarried divorcees and more recently he opposed the change-over to blessing same-sex couples as promoted in Fiducia Supplicans. For his fidelity, Francis removed Burke from his position as the Vatican’s chief justice in 2014 and later stripped him of his lodging and salary. Francis said, “Cardinal Burke is my enemy, so I am taking away his flat and salary.”

He accuses loyal prelates like Cardinal Burke of being “ostentatious,” but is it not Francis who is ostentatious by writing about himself? Shouldn’t a pope keep himself out of the picture and imitate Burke’s selfless example of letting God’s glory shine forth?

“Hope” is the first autobiography ever written by a sitting pope and one that sorrowfully expresses hope of a new church with a new image. Hope is the word that Communist Obama used to advocate “change” and the tearing down of Christian culture in favor of a communistic New World Order. Is this what the Bishop of Rome aspires after?

Among Francis’ hopes and dreams is the eliminating of the royal garments of the priesthood. He calls them “ostentatious” but who ever said they were? Did God tell him this? Francis says "do not judge" so why has he spent the past eleven years judging Christ’s Church?

What is sad is that traditional seminarians who have spent many years in the seminary preparing for the priesthood and even resolving to be jeered for the cause are now considered braggarts by their head. If they are braggarts, what shall we say of those who relentlessly tout change and bow to the invention of their own hands?