Uganda is likely to pass a law within months that will make homosexuality a capital offence, joining 37 other countries in the continent where American evangelical Christian groups are increasingly spreading bigotry

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/13/death-penalty-uganda-homosexuals

Family in UN Address

(Pope Francis) condemned “ideological colonization” as he had done in the encyclical Laudato Si, in a reference to basing aid to poor countries on their acceptance of population control and other focuses offensive to their people and against domestic laws like homosexual rights.

http://anglicanmainstream.org/pope-speaks-out-for-unborn-natural-family-in-un-address/

Catholics want to revive Uganda’s ‘kill gays’ bill

Uganda’s Catholic bishops are calling for the revival of the notorious ‘kill the gays’ bill, despite previously opposing it.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which calls for the execution of gays in the African country, was effectively shelved last year by the government, following sustained pressure from international donor countries.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/catholics-want-revive-ugandas-kill-gays-bill110612/

One way to answer the question of whether Junipero Serra was really good for the Native Americans he purported to serve was how natives were treated on the missions themselves. ..The contemporary picture of the missions is less a "bucolic arcadia" than a feudal labor camp, with natives beaten if they violated Catholic teachings or didn't work hard enough.

And that is at the heart of contemporary opposition to Junipero Serra: .. that he helped to erase and destroy their culture.

Some critics call this "cultural genocide." .. Serra was interested in assimilating natives into "civilization." And for native groups, and many other contemporary progressives, it's a cultural imperialism that doesn't deserve to be honored.

It's usually a bad idea for non-Catholics to assume that Catholic saints were good people by non-Catholic standards. (Mother Teresa's .. advocacy against condoms at the height of the AIDS epidemic).

Pope Francis isn't an American progressive; he is a Catholic pope. And it's not surprising that he believes the "saving" of Native American souls was a good thing in and of itself.

(...)
shortly after he was elected, Francis flatly rejected the idea that the institution could benefit from opening itself to the hearts and minds of women. Asked about the issue of female priests, he replied, “The church has spoken and says no,” adding, “That door is closed.”

Francis preaches against the elites while keeping the church an elite boys’ club.

(...)

Paul Vallely, the author of a respected biography, “Pope Francis: Struggle for the Soul of Catholicism,” calls women the pontiff’s “area of greatest weakness.”

“He understands there is a problem with the role of women in the church and talks frequently about the need for a ‘new profound theology of women,’ but he has no idea how to implement this,” Vallely told me. “In practice, he is a man of a certain age from a macho, Latin American cultural background who has limited understanding of the women in the modern world, ..

(...)

a priest in San Francisco, Father Jack McClure, was being sanctioned for appearing at a conference on women’s ordination in Philadelphia last weekend (...) Father McClure got a message from his archbishop in San Francisco, the archconservative Salvatore Cordileone — who supported a pastor who banned altar girls this year — that he could no longer celebrate Mass, starting in October. (...)

If only the pope could apply this Golden Rule: Do unto women as you would have them do unto you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-francis-the-perfect-19th-century-pope.html