So my Facebook and Twitter feeds were filled today with outrage and calumny aimed at Pope Francis and the Vatican for "officially recognizing" the Palestinian state... only that's not what really happened:
This morning, the Associated Press broke what appeared to be a big story: The Vatican had just officially recognized the state of Palestine.
...
Other outlets quickly picked up the AP’s story or hammered out their own version. Vox’s “Pope Francis just officially recognized Palestine as a state” offers a representative headline. Soon, the move was being alternatively celebrated and condemned by anti-Israel activists, the Anti-Defamation League, and even members of Congress.
But there was just one small problem with the news driving the whole hullabaloo: the Vatican had
actually recognized Palestine in 2012, after it declared statehood at the United Nations.
This fact, which is evident from a cursory search of the Vatican’s official news service, was quickly noted by several experts in Palestinian politics. Others observed that during his trip last May to Israel and Palestine, Pope Francis had explicitly heralded the “good relations existing between the Holy See and the State of Palestine.” As Ramallah-based journalist and former Al Jazeera producer Dalia Hatuqa put it: “For years, Vatican has referred to it as State of Palestine. Nothing new here.”
The new treaty reported by the AP between the Vatican and “the state of Palestine,” in other words, was simply the first accord signed by the two parties since that original official recognition. Sure enough, when more discerning reporters tried to follow up on the AP’s big scoop, the Vatican and Palestinian Authority promptly denied that anything new had transpired, and pointed out that the official Vatican recognition had already been conferred years prior.
Years prior when... wait for it... the Pope was Benedict XVI.
I shake my head at those, most of them conservative sadly, who jump on the I hate Pope Francis bandwagon.
At what point will my conservative brethren stop with the knee-jerk reactions and think through and/or follow up with news concerning this Pope?
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