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“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”–The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified Dec., 15, 1791.

An open assault on the First Amendment is occurring across America, as college students who are peacefully exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech, challenging government policies, are being arrested in droves.

The self-appointed Congressional Overseers of Higher Education, who hauled politically naïve university presidents into their star chambers and publicly castigated the savants for not admonishing their students to be sufficiently sympathetic to genocide, essentially demanded loyalty, not to America, but to the deadly agenda of a country not our own. 

Leading government officials have expressed dismay at the furor which has erupted on campuses and have encouraged the use of repressive tactics. 

What is happening on campuses?  Did the students not get the message? – –   Obey!

Obey, or there will be no graduation. Obey! Or you cannot be valedictorian. Obey! Or be suspended, expelled, even denied employment opportunities. Obey! Or you will be marked for life as a troublemaker, a disrupter. Obey! If you want to get ahead in society.  Obey!  Don’t make demands. Don’t even ask questions. Obey! You are students.  Your lot is to listen, and Obey.

The relative quiescence on campuses in the past few decades has been misread as students being interested in their inner world and not the outer world.  Social media had become a soporific and a grand distraction. Campuses were generally the last places expected to ignite political movements.

Oh, how dangerously wrong America’s leaders are about the energy that issues  spontaneously on campuses, demanding an end to mass violence sanctioned and financed by our government.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, campuses were the flash points from which the Vietnam-era anti-war movement grew. I remember student rallies at Cleveland State University (CSU).  Then, instead of threatening students with arrest, CSU President Harold Enarson created a space for them to gather, spoke to students, encouraged peaceful protest and, as a result, Cleveland State University, still in its infancy, was a catalyst for social and political change. 

The protests focused public attention on the Vietnam War. The  political became personal.  President Lyndon Baines Johnson became the target.

“LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today,” was a chant heard on campuses and on streets where masses gathered to demand an end to the war. 

The protests drove Johnson from the presidency.  He announced on March 31, 1968:

I have concluded that I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year….Accordingly, I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

Then came Kent State University, and four dead in Ohio on May 4, 1970.

Years later, as chairman of a congressional oversight subcommittee, I quietly probed the Kent State shootings and learned (as had others before me) that a suspected FBI asset on campus, taking pictures of protestors, found himself suddenly surrounded by students who believed him to be an informant, and he drew a gun.    

He may have fired shots in the air which were mistaken as an attack on the Ohio National Guard,  (which unfortunately had been ordered to campus by the Governor), and the Guard returned fire, setting off a national tragedy. 

Unfortunately, the FBI did not cooperate with my request for a further search of records to determine the precise role of its informant and my term in Congress came to a close.  Who fired the first shot?  Was it someone acting as an agent of the government?   

Government at all levels must tread lightly in using force against peaceful protestors who are exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech. 

Agencies and counter-parties to the debate over U.S. foreign policy must avoid sending informants, or worse, agents provocateurs into a campus fray. 

One only needs to be aware of the execrable COINTELPRO gambit of US intelligence agencies which infiltrated, disrupted and derailed protests and causes which challenged the status quo, during the Vietnam era.

 We should view campus protests as one of the few healthy signs in a nation where government spying, support for a genocidal war, abandonment of Constitutional liberties and media complicity has constructed not only an alternate politics, but an alternate reality.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command,” wrote George Orwell in 1984.

College students are not rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears.  Thirty-Four thousand dead Palestinians, most of them women and children.  The students know the horrific violence going on thousands of miles away, and they know their government is licensing it.  They are demanding the war cease.  

They are standing on more than two centuries of citizen action challenging the government. Those who misuse their authority to suppress legitimate dissent are undermining foundational Constitutional freedoms, the Freedom of Speech and the Right to Protest. The First Amendment is the cornerstone of the American Republic.

Reprinted with permission from The Kucinich Report.

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London could have “designed” the bill to shift the burden to Dublin, Micheal Martin has told The Telegraph

Migrants are flocking to Ireland in greater numbers since the UK passed a bill allowing illegal immigrants to be deported to Rwanda, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin has claimed.

Britain struck a five-year agreement with Rwanda in April 2022 for illegal immigrants to be sent to the landlocked nation while their asylum claims are processed. However, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) intervened to block the first deportation flight two months later, and the UK’s Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful last November.

Earlier this week, the British parliament approved the Safety of Rwanda Bill, which the government says will clear the way for flights to begin within three months.

The approval is already “impacting on Ireland,” Martin told The Telegraph on Thursday. Following the bill’s passage, migrants are “fearful” of staying in the UK and have entered Ireland en masse “to get sanctuary here and within the European Union as opposed to the potential of being deported to Rwanda,” he added.

Earlier this week, Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee revealed that more than 80% of asylum applicants in Ireland are entering the republic from Northern Ireland. 

Checkpoints along the Northern Irish border were abolished in 1998 as a condition of the Good Friday Agreement, which largely ended decades of sectarian violence, known as ‘The Troubles’, in the British region. At present, asylum seekers who have entered the UK illegally can freely walk into Ireland across this border.

According to Martin, the British government may have passed the deportation bill knowing that it would shift the burden of dealing with illegal immigration to Ireland. “Maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have,” he told The Telegraph.

Ireland has experienced a surge in immigration in recent years. The country has taken in more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees since 2022, and more than 13,000 people from other countries have applied for asylum in Ireland annually since then. According to Ireland’s International Protection Office, Nigerians accounted for 15% of all asylum applicants last year, followed by Algerians, Afghans, Somalians, and Georgians. 

READ MORE: Migrant-loving Western leaders are at war with their own people

With Ireland in the depths of the EU’s worst housing crisis and with public services struggling to accommodate the new arrivals, this influx has set off a wave of public discontent. Protests are commonplace outside sites chosen by the government to house immigrants, and several of these sites have been set on fire by locals.

Six people were arrested on Thursday night after demonstrators clashed with armored riot police in the village of Newtownmountkennedy, County Wicklow, where the government plans to house 160 asylum seekers. Earlier this week, Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman told the Irish broadcaster RTE that the site in Newtownmountkennedy is “one of the locations” where hundreds of male migrants living in tents on the streets of Dublin will be moved.

According to an opinion poll published in January, seven in ten Irish people think the state has taken in too many refugees.

RFK Jr. intends to sue the White House, claiming it is trying to “screw” young Americans simply to appear tough on China

US independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to file a lawsuit against the American government over its threat to ban the TikTok social media platform, which has 170 million users in the country.

President Joe Biden this week signed into law a bill which gives TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, 270 days to divest from it. Should it fail to comply, TikTok will be banned from app stores serving American customers.

Kennedy believes the threat to be unconstitutional and that the justification for it – namely that the Chinese government could be using TikoTok to collect American citizens’ personal data – is a “smokescreen.”

“Intelligence agencies from lots of countries, especially ours, are harvesting your data from everywhere all the time,” he said on Friday in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).

US officials “don’t understand that TikTok is an entrepreneurial platform for thousands of American young people,” the politician added. “They want to screw them over just so they can pretend to be tough on China.”

Kennedy’s campaign is touted as antithetical to both Biden and his presumed Republican challenger, Donald Trump. He has urged American voters to reject both leading national parties, which he claims are barely distinguishable and represent big business rather than common people.

Meanwhile, TikTok also intends to challenge the potential ban on First Amendment grounds.

“The facts and the constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail again,” the CEO of the multibillion-dollar platform, Shou Zi Chew, said in a video statement posted moments after Biden signed the bill on Wednesday.

He was referring to Trump’s attempt in 2020 to ban TikTok and fellow Chinese-owned app WeChat, which was overturned in US courts.

The Republican candidate has also criticized the White House over the latest campaign against TikTok. On Monday, Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that Biden “is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant.”

READ MORE: Blinken accuses China of election interference

The deadline given to TikTok is set to expire shortly after the presidential election in November. Among other things, the platform is a primary source of news for many young American voters, according to multiple surveys. Officials from both parties have been pressuring social media platforms to introduce stricter content moderation policies to supposedly combat misinformation.

Western assistance to Kiev prolongs the conflict with Russia and enriches corrupt officials, Florian Philippot has said

A large part of Western aid to Kiev is being embezzled by Ukrainian officials, despite President Vladimir Zelensky’s assurances that it is being used in the fight against Russia, a top French politician has said. 

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Florian Philippot, leader of the Patriots (Les Patriotes) party and a long-time vocal critic of Western assistance to Ukraine, alleged that Zelensky was lying when he claimed that all US aid to his country “goes to the battlefield.” 

“In reality a large part is diverted and goes into corruption!” Philippot wrote. He noted Kiev’s admission last month that it had not received €16 billion ($17.1 billion) in aid collected by Poland and the European Commission. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal claimed he had “no idea” what happened to the funds.

Philippot also pointed to a recent corruption scandal involving Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Nikolay Solsky, who is accused of illegally appropriating state land worth nearly €6.9 million ($7.4 million). “Yet another case of corruption in this country, which is one of the most corrupt on the planet!” the French politician remarked. 

“Every euro sent to Ukraine prolongs the war and therefore causes unnecessary deaths, impoverishes us here, and has a strong chance of enriching the corrupt!” he added, calling for the conflict to be resolved as soon as possible. 

Ukraine has been plagued by widespread graft for years, and a 2015 Guardian article described it as “the most corrupt nation in Europe.” More recently, it ranked 104 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. 

The issue has taken center stage during the conflict with Russia, including in the Ukrainian military, which has been rocked by several graft scandals in recent months. This winter, Ukraine’s SBU, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, announced that it had uncovered a major embezzlement scheme in which Ukrainian officials and private contractors stole around $40 million earmarked for shell procurement. 

Elsewhere, the Pentagon’s inspector general admitted that Washington had failed to properly track more than $1 billion in weapons sent to Ukraine, although this did not stop US officials from claiming that they believed the assistance to have reached its intended destination.

Russia, meanwhile, has for months been warning about the spillover of foreign weapons sent to Ukraine, cautioning that they are ending up in the hands of organized crime outside of the country.

Why Did China Facing Endless Troubles from Washington Accept a Visit from Blinken Aimed at Disrupting China’s Relationship with Russia?

Paul Craig Roberts

Blinken Accuses China of helping Trump Steal the Election in November

Last time it was Russiagate. This time will it be Chinagate?

https://www.rt.com/news/596656-blinken-cnn-election-interferense/

While Blinken accuses China out of one side of his mouth, he threatens China out of the other side with sanctions unless China abandons its support of Russia. https://www.rt.com/news/596632-blinken-in-beijing-russia/

At the same time, Blinken is up to mischief in Taiwan and supporting US military aid and presence on the island despite the official US “one China” policy. Surely it must occur to the Chinese government that if China helps Washington isolate Russia, China herself is isolated. In view of such reports as this–“US Encircling China With Military Bases to Cut Off Ocean Access in Conflict Scenario” ( https://sputnikglobe.com/20240427/us-encircling-china-with-military-bases-to-cut-off-ocean-access-in-conflict-scenario—reports-1118142625.html ) — Chinese “Russian expert” Professor Feng Yujun appears to be very foolish. It is difficult to imagine China’s development and Silk Road project without Russian energy.

But maybe not. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have delusional tendencies that if they refuse to respond with more than words to Washington’s provocations, everything will eventually be OK. As I see it, the policy of conflict avoidance simply increases the number and seriousness of the provocations.

As I emphasize, the most important step toward peace would be a Russian-Chinese-Iranian announcement of a mutual defense treaty. This would introduce a missing caution into US foreign policy and halt the provocations that are leading to nuclear war.

The Truth About the Destruction of Gaza
Michael Hudson
https://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-truth-about-the-destruction-of-gaza/

A Portuguese-flagged container ship was detained on April 13

The crew of a Portuguese-flagged ship linked to Israel recently detained by Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), have been granted consular access and will be released, local media reported on Saturday, citing the Iranian foreign ministry.

The IRGC stormed an Israeli-operated container ship with a crew of 25, reportedly including Indian and Russian nationals, in the Persian Gulf on April 13 and took control of the vessel.

The MSC Aries was boarded as it transited the Strait of Hormuz. Once under the IRGC’s control, it was taken to Iranian territorial waters.

In a telephone call, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reportedly told his Portuguese counterpart Paulo Rangel that Iran considers the release of the ship’s crew “as a humanitarian issue.”

“We have announced to their ambassadors in Tehran their access to consular services, release, and extradition,” the official said, as quoted by local media.

The Iranian foreign minister didn’t specify when the crew members would be released.

According to Reuters, Iran’s foreign ministry said the Aries was seized for “violating maritime laws” and that there was no doubt it was linked to Israel.

The Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries is operated by Zodiac Maritime, a shipping firm owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer. At the time of the seizure, it was sailing past the Emirati port of Fujairah with its transponder switched off, the Associated Press reported. With Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz and Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacking Israeli shipping interests in the Red Sea, it is standard practice for Israeli-linked vessels to disable their tracking data when sailing in the region.

The seizure of the Aries came two weeks after an alleged Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria’s capital Damascus. Seven officers of the IRGC’s Quds Force, including two generals, were reportedly killed in the attack.

The detention of the ship coincided with Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel. On April 13, Tehran launched what is estimated to have been several hundred missiles and explosive drones on targets in the country.

The Russian president isn’t likely to have mandated the killing of the imprisoned opposition figure, the sources have told the outlet

The CIA and other US intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian authorities weren’t involved in the death of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Navalny, who had been serving a lengthy prison sentence stemming from his violations of the terms of a previous fraud conviction and his “extremist activities,” died at a penal colony in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region in northern Russia on February 16.

The Russian prison authorities insist that there was no foul play in the passing of the anti-corruption activist. They said that the 47-year-old suddenly fell ill after a walk and collapsed, and that efforts to resuscitate him were in vain. According to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which Navalny used to head, the death certificate provided to his mother stated he had died of natural causes.

However, some Western leaders and the FBK insisted that Russian authorities were behind the activist’s passing. “Make no mistake. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” US President Joe Biden said at the time, without providing any proof of his claim.

Now, however, the US intelligence agencies have come to the conclusion that Putin “likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed,” the WSJ said in an article on Saturday.

This assessment is based on a range of data such as classified intelligence and the analysis of public facts, including “the timing of his death and how it overshadowed Putin’s re-election,” the sources explained. Navalny died a month before the Russian presidential election, in which Putin won 87.28% of the ballot.

The finding is broadly accepted by several agencies, including the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the State Department’s intelligence unit, the article read.

The sources clarified that the assessment by the US intelligence “doesn’t dispute Putin’s culpability for Navalny’s death, but rather finds he probably didn’t order it at that moment.”

READ MORE: Kremlin denies Navalny swap talks with West

Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that he saw the article in the Wall Street Journal, but stressed that he “would not call it a high-quality piece that deserves any attention.” The publication contained “some empty reflections” and was apparently planned as “a Saturday reading for a global audience,” he stressed.

Berlin police have arrested 75 people after clashing with demonstrators camped outside the Chancellery

Dozens of people were arrested in Berlin on Friday as German police moved to clear a pro-Palestinian protest camp set outside the Chancellery building two weeks ago.  

The activists residing in the camp, which consisted of 20 tents, have been demanding an end to German weapons shipments to Israel as the Jewish state continues its siege of Gaza. The protesters have also decried the criminalization of the Palestinian solidarity movement.  

German authorities have accused the demonstrators of incitement to hatred and using unconstitutional symbols and forbidden slogans. The protestors are also alleged to have breached restrictions such as those protecting green areas.  

“Protection of gatherings cannot be guaranteed at this point because public safety and order are significantly at risk,” police spokesperson Anja Dierschke was quoted as saying by the DW news outlet.  

On Friday, police moved to clear out the camp and could be seen clashing with dozens of activists. Footage showed officers detaining people, some of whom resisted and chanted “Viva, viva Palestina.”

According to police, some 150 officers were deployed to the Chancellery to tear down the tents. Seventy-five arrests were made of protesters and other supporters who allegedly violated the Freedom of Assembly Acts.  

The demonstrators, meanwhile, have insisted that the German authorities had no right to clear out the camp.  

“We’ve been peaceful but we’ve been harassed by the police every single day who have given us the most stupid restriction,” said one activist named Nassar.  

"They’ve forbidden us from using languages which aren’t German or English, they have criminalized our prayers, our songs, our workshops, and now their official reasoning is that we had a sofa which was damaging the grass ... In Germany, damaging the lawn is worse than committing genocide,” Nassar told DW.  

“Welcome to Germany, where killing 35,000 people is worse than harming a little bit of grass,” another protester commented, referring to the total death toll cited by Gaza health authorities amid Israel’s relentless retaliatory assault on the Palestinian enclave.  

Israel’s siege comes in response to the October 7 Hamas attack on the Jewish state, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage.

Such delicate matters should be discussed behind closed doors, Radoslaw Sikorski says

Poland’s foreign minister has said President Andrzej Duda had no authority to speculate about Warsaw hosting part of the US nuclear arsenal on its soil.

In an interview with Polsat News TV on Friday, Radoslaw Sikorski weighed in on Duda’s statement earlier this week, when he said placing US nukes in Poland “has been a topic of Polish-American talks for some time” and that he had “declared readiness” to host to the weapons. Under the current political setup in Poland, Duda has found himself in opposition to the government, which was formed by a parliamentary majority.

“Mr President has already been told, at the highest levels… not to talk about it, that there is no chance for it now. I don’t know why he said it,” Sikorski stated.

The foreign minister also stressed that Duda, as head of state, is obligated to implement foreign policy in a way articulated by the Council of Ministers, the top executive decision-making body. “We have not given any authorization or encouragement to talk about it publicly,” Sikorski noted.

He went on to dismiss speculation that Poland would itself become a nuclear power by potentially joining NATO’s nuclear sharing program. “These are very complicated issues that we discuss at NATO nuclear planning meetings,” he said, stressing that those conversations “should not take place in public.”

The minister also noted that Russia has already responded to Duda’s comments. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that if Poland were to host US nuclear weapons, the Russian military would “take all necessary countermeasures to ensure our security.” In similar remarks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that the “relevant facilities” in Poland would “immediately be listed as legitimate targets in case of a direct military conflict with NATO.”

The US currently has nuclear weapons stationed in five fellow NATO states: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye. If Poland were to host US nuclear arms, it would put NATO’s nuclear arsenal at the doorstep of Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad, and also Belarus, Moscow’s key ally.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has signaled that the US-led military bloc has no plans to send its atomic arsenal to Poland, while French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu has warned that the potential move would violate key Russia-NATO arms control agreements.

It’s not clear what a victory over Russia is supposed to look like, the entrepreneur has claimed

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has challenged the administration of US President Joe Biden to define what “victory” would look like in the Ukraine conflict, after a senior White House official claimed that Kiev can defeat Russia.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan backed Ukraine’s capabilities on MSNBC on Friday, as he hailed Biden’s drawdown of an additional $1 billion worth of weapons for Kiev’s war effort against Moscow.

A delay in arms supplies caused by partisan clashes in the US Congress has put Ukrainian forces into a “hole” from which they are yet to dig themselves out, Sullivan said. He claimed, however, that Kiev’s “strategic position is strong” and that US officials “believe ultimately Ukraine can win this war.”

“Ukraine has the will to win this war, and we have the will to support them in that effort,” Sullivan vowed.

Reacting in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk asked: “What does victory look like?”

What does victory look like?

The billionaire has long been skeptical about the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy, including its declared willingness to let Kiev dictate the goals of the conflict and the ways of achieving them.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has insisted that a “just peace” requires nothing short of full control of all the territory claimed by Kiev.

The Ukrainian demands, as outlined in the so-called ‘Zelensky formula’, also include war reparations, tribunals for senior Russian officials, and long-term international support of Ukraine’s security and reconstruction. Switzerland is set to host a summit in mid-June, where Kiev and its Western backers will try to convince neutral nations to sign up for the Ukrainian plan.

Moscow, which has not been invited to the event, has rejected the Ukrainian formula as being detached from reality. It perceives the hostilities as a Washington-driven proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainians serve as ‘cannon fodder’. This week, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated Ukrainian military casualties as approaching 500,000 in the conflict.

Explaining their opposition to continued arms supplies to Ukraine, US Republican lawmakers have cited the lack of a clear game plan by Zelensky and Biden. Instead, they argue that the funds would be better spent on America’s own needs, particularly the security of the southern US border.

Looking over the last lines of T.S. Eliot’s fabled Four Quartets, the great masterwork on which his reputation rests, one sees in the final movement of the poem a striking reminder of that which we do well never to forget. It is the knowledge that, in this life certainly, We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the…

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Accusations of torture and executions against Israeli troops are “fake news,” an IDF spokesman told the outlet

Israel will not investigate the mass graves found at Gaza hospitals, as it has already dealt with the matter and found no wrongdoing by its troops, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has told Politico.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday that Washington wanted to see the circumstances surrounding the hundreds of deaths “thoroughly and transparently investigated.” 

Officials in Gaza have said a total of 392 bodies, including those of women and children, and others bearing signs of torture and executions, have so far been found at makeshift burial sites at two hospitals that had been raided by the Israeli military.

IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani told Politico on Friday that reports of Israeli troops having anything to do with the mass burials were “fake news.”

When asked whether that meant that Israel would not investigate the matter, he replied: “Investigate what?”

“We gave answers. We don’t bury people in mass graves. Not something we do,” the spokesman insisted, without specifying to whom those answers were given.

An unnamed US official told Politico that “the Israelis have told us privately what they’ve said publicly, that they totally reject the allegations.” However, the source stressed that the authorities in Washington “aren’t in a position to validate that, and would like a thorough and transparent investigation into the reports.”

Israel earlier said its forces had to fight inside the Nasser and Al-Shifa hospitals because Hamas militants used them as their bases – a claim that both the Palestinian armed group and medics have denied. According to the IDF, its troops killed around 200 militants at Al-Shifa, without harming civilians.

Sullivan’s call for a probe into the mass graves came on the same day that US President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package, which included $26.4 billion in military assistance for Israel.

READ MORE: US won’t sanction IDF despite ‘gross human rights violations’ – media

The death toll from Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in Gaza over the past six months has reached 34,356, with 77,368 others wounded, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry. The campaign was launched in response to an incursion into Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2014 (April 27th), Pope Francis canonized two of his predecessors, John XXIII and John Paul II. Ten years later, has the Holy Father turned to John Paul in his time of need?

Many devotees of St. John Paul the Great – the title of one of Pope Francis’ interview books, by the way – were terribly disappointed at the rather low-key approach the Holy Father took at the canonization, briefly mentioning the two popes only in reference to his Synod on the Family. The canonization date was also the 75th birthday of Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, John Paul’s longtime secretary, just sitting yards away. Pope Francis took no note of it.

It was a mistake to read too much into the underwhelming homily. In the years since, it has become evident that taking little note of the saints is typical for the Holy Father. In 2019, he canonized the “Mother Teresa of Brazil,” Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes, without even mentioning her name. So famous was she that John Paul visited her in the hospital during a trip to Brazil.

The odd relationship of Francis to John Paul was evident early on. One would expect hurrahs and hosannas from the former about the latter, given that it was the latter who rescued the former from his Jesuit exile in Córdoba.

By 1990, the Argentinian Jesuits, tired of Father Jorge Bergoglio’s divisiveness in the community, sent him 500 miles north of Buenos Aires to tend to elderly Jesuits and hear confessions in Córdoba. Had it been up to his Jesuit confreres, Fr. Bergoglio would likely have spent the next ten years teaching high school chemistry somewhere. Instead, John Paul ended the exile and returned him to Buenos Aires as the auxiliary bishop. Six years later, he was the archbishop. Exile and estrangement from the Jesuits were likely counted as good references in Rome.

Yet Pope Francis took an odd distance upon his election as pope. When it came time to announce the miracle necessary for the canonization of John Paul, it was done on the same day as the encyclical Lumen fidei was released. And that Francis and Benedict XVI appeared together for the first time at a Vatican event. Francis stepped on the John Paul story with a pile driver.

Moreover, in waiving the miracle requirement for John XXIII so that he could be canonized alongside John Paul II, Pope Francis invited the supposition that he desired to dilute the focus on John Paul alone.

Symbols would soon give way to a seeming desire to set aside some of John Paul’s signature achievements.

The landmark encyclical Veritatis splendor – one of the most consequential in the last century – became the document that didn’t bark under Francis. Amoris laetitia, among the longest papal documents in history, included not a single reference to Veritatis splendor in its 400+ citations. Despite Chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia being in apparent contradiction with the principles of Veritatis splendor, the latter was simply treated as if it did not exist.

If, as widely reported, Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández – one of the first episcopal appointments Pope Francis made in Argentina – was the principal drafter of Amoris laetitia, that, logically, would follow. Fernández had publicly been at odds with the teaching of Veritatis splendor, so much so that when Cardinal Bergoglio proposed him as rector of the Catholic University of Argentina, the Vatican refused approval. Bergoglio dug in, a standoff ensued, and Fernández was eventually installed. He was elevated to be archbishop of La Plata within months of Francis’ election.

In due course, John Paul’s principal academic foundation, the JPII Institute, devoted to theological studies on marriage and the family, was reconfigured so as to reflect the approach of Amoris laetitia. It was effectively abolished.

That was a particularly painful blow for those John Paul inspired, as the Institute was born from his heart and bathed in his blood. He was scheduled to announce it at the general audience of May 13, 1981, the day he was shot. The Institute survived the assassination attempt. It would not survive the man John Paul created a cardinal.

The two academies established by John Paul in 1994 – the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences – were put on a similar trajectory, now making news primarily when they confuse, rather than clarify, Catholic social teaching.

All of which makes the publication of Dignitas infinita (DI), the recent Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), a curious moment. Is John Paul being enlisted in another rescue mission, as in Córdoba more than thirty years ago?

DDF prefect Cardinal Fernández’s previous declaration, Fiducia supplicans, was a major fiasco. Pope Francis granted an exemption to his magisterium for Africa, and many other bishops exempted themselves, judging the blessings for “irregular and same-sex couples” to be impossible, or at least massively imprudent.

Immediately, Cardinal Fernández began to maneuver, promising another declaration on human dignity that would mollify critics, as if the DDF was engaging in Clintonian triangulation rather than proclaiming the splendor of the veritas. Thus came Dignitas infinita earlier this month.

For the mollifying maneuver to be successful, it would be helpful to invoke the heavenly patronage of John Paul. Five of his major texts are cited, and there is this passage:

It would be a grave error to think that by distancing ourselves from God and his assistance, we could somehow be freer and thus feel more dignified. Instead, detached from the Creator, our freedom can only weaken and become obscured. The same happens if freedom imagines itself to be independent of any external reference and perceives any relationship with a prior truth as a threat. (#30)

That sounds like Veritatis Splendor, but a direct quotation would apparently be a step too far. Instead, the pope and prefect decided to use John Paul for the title: “Infinite dignity” is taken from a rather obscure source, an Angelus address at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Osnabrück, Germany on November 16, 1980.

It’s not a phrase John Paul used often. Perhaps he only used it once. The German word unendliche could be translated to mean “endless” or “without limits.” Regardless, the title was a clear stretch meant to invoke John Paul.

The title of DI was originally supposed to be Al di là di ogni circonstanza (beyond all circumstances), a line from Fratelli Tutti, the 2020 encyclical of Pope Francis. It is entirely plausible that after the Fiducia debacle, Fernández thought it wiser – or least more clever – for the Holy Father to appeal to his predecessor rather than to himself.

That’s all style rather than substance, but style matters. Indeed, the style of distancing this pontificate from that of John Paul, and specifically Veritatis splendor, was always unnecessary.

One citation does not a summer make, but perhaps Dignitas marks a spring thaw, and John Paul the Great is now the saint that can come in from the cold.

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