Pope Francis’s new encyclical is a papal warning about a world going backward

By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli Oct. 4, 2020 at 12:58 p.m. EDT

ROME — Humankind, Pope Francis says, is in the midst of a worrying regression. People are intensely polarized. Their debates, absent real listening, seem to have devolved into a “permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.” In some countries, leaders are using a “strategy of ridicule” and relentless criticism, spreading despair as a way to “dominate and gain control.”

Amid all that, the pope says, the notion of a kinder, more respecting world “sounds like madness.”

But with the release Sunday of his third encyclical, a book-length paper that feels like something from a bygone time, Francis makes an uncynical case for how people can reverse course. Read more HERE.