(LifeSiteNews) — Respected Vatican journalist Edward Pentin has said that Pope Francis and the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping share “similar global visions,” drawing together statements by the two men demonstrating the striking similarities.
Pentin, who is the Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register, noted in an article on his personal blog that Jinping’s address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) on January 17 bears many parallels to comments and writings of the Supreme Pontiff over the almost nine years since his election, especially in relation to the goals of globalism and the Davos elite.
Indeed, Pentin stated that “[t]here is little of Xi’s speech that Francis and today’s Vatican would likely disagree with.”
Pentin provided a selection of statements from Jinping’s address, comparing them against statements of Francis in order to exhibit their shared worldview: a worldview once condemned by Pope Leo XIII as “a wicked confederacy” which seeks to “overthrow of all civil society.”
A notable theme running through Jinping’s address was one of “multilateralism,” by which he said nations “should remove barriers, not erect walls. We should open up, not close off. We should seek integration, not decoupling.”
Just 4 months ago, as the United Nations (UN) conference on climate change met in Glasgow for its COP26 event, the Pope spoke on British national radio, affirming in like manner his belief that the coronavirus crisis presents a “lesson … to build together, so that there will no longer be any borders, barriers or political walls for us to hide behind.”
Pentin pointed out the strange coincidence of analogies used by the communist president and leader of the Catholic Church to describe the international measures taken in response to COVID-19 and how they envisage the worldwide recovery effort.
“Small boats may not survive a storm, but a giant ship is strong enough to brave a storm. Thanks to the concerted efforts of the international community, major progress has been made in the global fight against the pandemic,” Jinping told the WEF conference.
Last April, Francis wrote on the “International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace” that the “lesson learned from the recent pandemic is the awareness that we are a global community, all in the same boat,” laying out his desire to see international states act in uniformity.
Additionally, Francis has said that a “comprehensive commitment on the part of the international community is necessary, so that the entire world population can have equal access to essential medical care and vaccines,” echoing Jinping’s call for a collaborative international effort to develop and give access to medicines in the wake of the novel coronavirus.
“Countries need to strengthen international cooperation against COVID-19, carry out active cooperation on research and development of medicines, jointly build multiple lines of defense against the coronavirus, and speed up efforts to build a global community of health for all,” the Chinese premier stated.
Both Jinping and Francis have spoken at length about the breaking down of barriers, including physical blockades, like state borders, and cultural divisions between people. As an example, Pentin highlighted Jinping’s hypocritical criticism of sovereign states “overstretching the concept of national security” regarding “economic and technological advances,” which the president said is like “single-mindedly building ‘exclusive yards with high walls.’”
In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the Pope cautioned mankind against the apparent “temptation to build a culture of walls, to raise walls, walls in the heart, walls on the land, in order to prevent this encounter with other cultures, with other people.”
“Those who raise walls,” he said “will end up as slaves within the very walls they have built. They are left without horizons, for they lack this interchange with others.”
Perhaps most prominently, the global leaders have made similarly positive remarks concerning the UN’s 2030 Agenda, the organization’s “sustainable development” plan. Jinping boasted in his statement that he has “put forward a Global Development Initiative at the UN General Assembly to draw international attention to the pressing challenges faced by developing countries. The Initiative is a public good open to the whole world, which aims to form synergy with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and boost common development across the world.”
Stressing a “people-centered philosophy of development, place development and livelihoods,” Jinping implored the WEF to put Agenda 2030 “front and center in global macro-policies.”
Meanwhile, Francis gave his express support for the “Sustainable Development Goals” of the UN in 2019, which among other things promotes “universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” – code words for contraception and legal abortion, and which rely on the climate agenda in order to attain the redistribution of world property.
The Pope claimed that the approval of the goals by some 190 countries has been “a great step forward for global dialogue, marking a vitally new and universal solidarity.”
“Different religious traditions, including the Catholic tradition, have embraced the objectives of sustainable development because they are the result of global participatory processes that, on the one hand, reflect the values of people and, on the other, are sustained by an integral vision of development.”
“We are all members of the one human family,” Francis told the WEF in January 2020. “The moral obligation to care for one another flows from this fact, as does the correlative principle of placing the human person, rather than the mere pursuit of power or profit, at the very centre of public policy.”
In 2018 Pope Francis signed the controversial Sino-Vatican accord, brokered in part by the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Although many of the details of the agreement have been kept under lock and key, Francis ceded control over appointing bishops in China to the CCP and the state-recognized Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, while Beijing reportedly accepted Francis as the head of the Catholic Church.
The deal was renewed in 2020.