Is the Pope a communist?

On his way back from the Victory Day Parade in Moscow last month, the Cuban leader Raul Castro stopped off in Rome to thank Pope Francis for his role in Cuba's rapprochement with the United States. "If the Pope continues this way," Castro said afterwards, "I will go back to praying and go back to the church - I am not joking."

In September Francis will return the compliment with a stop-over in Cuba when he travels to the United States. And the American visit could turn out to be the most difficult overseas trip of his pontificate.

Raul Castro's endorsement is unlikely to recommend Francis to the American right, many of whom responded with visceral rage to President Obama's Cuban initiative.

"There is a lot of scepticism among (US) Catholics," says Stephen Moore, the chief economist at the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation, and himself a Catholic.

"I think this is a Pope who clearly has some Marxist leanings. It's unquestionable that he has a very vocal scepticism (about) capitalism and free enterprise and… I find that to be very troubling."

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host (or "shock jock", as he is sometimes called) is blunter. He dismissed Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospels) as "pure Marxism".

The US is far and away the Western world's most Christian nation. There are nearly 80 million baptised American Catholics, and it is the country's largest religious denomination. Many of its members look upon Saint John Paul II as a hero-pope because he was such a doughty Cold Warrior - and that adds the spice of a sense of betrayal to their reaction to Francis. Although his approval ratings are high, particularly among Catholic Democrats, he will be a polarising presence, and the question "Is the pope a communist?" will really matter.

Popes John Paul and Francis came from very different worlds, and that inevitably influenced their thinking on issues like the economy and social justice.

Most of John Paul's early life was lived under totalitarian regimes - first the Nazi occupation during World War Two, then the long Stalinist and Soviet domination of Poland during the Cold War. Everything he experienced as a priest and a bishop taught him that communism was the enemy.

By contrast, Francis - or Jorge Bergoglio as he then was - came of age under the regime of the nationalist Argentine leader, Juan Peron.

Austen Ivereigh, who has written a biography of Pope Francis, and himself studied theology in Argentina, says Peronism has dominated Argentine politics ever since but is difficult to define in conventional political terms.

"It is really neither left wing nor right wing," he says. "But it comes out of a kind of nationalist revival in Argentina in the 1930s and 1940s and was very closely identified with the working class, above all, and particularly the trade unions." Ivereigh believes the young Bergoglio was profoundly influenced by Peronist ideas.

(BBC)