Boggle

The pope must have borrowed one of Bush's speechwriters. This is simply unbelievable:

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.

OK -- maybe not completely unbelievable. I seem to remember that he joined the Hitler Youth and served in the German Army in 1944-45. (Check the link out, by the way -- it's not a particularly condemnatory article, but it's not terribly sympathetic, either, and asks some good questions.) I'm not calling him a Nazi at all, but there's the same kind of assumptions going on there.

Maybe the man is just delusional. That seems to be a syndrome among world leaders these days. Of course, it could just be a reflection of his contempt for everything not part of the Catholic hierarchy.