Tofay's Must Read

This post by John Aravosis at AmericaBlog on one of the front-runners for pope -- Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, who is not only a homophobe but a racist as well.

Cardinal Turkson was asked about the Catholic church’s ongoing pedophile scandal, and whether there was a chance the scandal might spread to Africa – most of the cases have been in western Europe and America.

Turkson’s response included two basic parts:

1. The pedophile scandal is really a gay scandal.

2. It’s a white thing, so black Africa shouldn’t have a problem.

The ignorance revealed by these statements is staggering. I often wonder that contemporary Africans are so brain-washed that they strenuously try to maintain the worst aspects of colonial rule, claiming them as "African traditions."

Read the whole thing -- it's pretty appalling. The only hopeful note is that if they elect someone like this joker as pope, the Church is finished in the West. Of course, that doesn't bode well for Africa. Latin America, which Aravosis points to as the other big Catholic region, has a distanced relationship with the Church, largely a reflection of its history: the Church was firmly on the side of the oppressors and seems to have as much influence politically as the Church in the U.S. and Europe, which is to say next to none.