Pope Francis: ‘Inside every Christian is a Jew’

CALLING Holocaust denial “madness,” Pope Francis told an interviewer that “inside every Christian is a Jew.”

“Every day, I pray with the Psalms of David. My prayer is Jewish, then I have the Eucharist, which is Christian,” the Argentine pontiff said in a wide-ranging interview published in Spain’s La Vanguardia newspaper.

The pope also took the opportunity to criticize Holocaust denial as “madness”

AND he launched a sweeping attack on the world’s economic system, saying it discards the young, puts money ahead of people and survives on the profits of war.

The 77-year-old leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said some countries had a youth unemployment rate of more than 50 per cent, with many millions in Europe seeking work in vain.

“It’s madness,” the Pope said.

“We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done,” he said.

“But since we cannot wage the third world war, we make regional wars.

“And what does that mean? That we make and sell arms. And with that the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies – the big world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money – are obviously cleaned up.”

Pope Francis says there is enough food to feed all the world’s hungry.

“When you see photographs of malnourished children you put your head in your hands, you cannot understand it,” he said.

“I think we are in a global economic system that is not good.”

The Pope says the people’s needs should be at the heart of the economic system.

“But we have placed money in the centre, the god of money. We have fallen into the sin of idolatry, the idolatry of money. The economy moves by the desire to have more and paradoxically it feeds a disposable culture,” he said.

Francis was also asked about his own security, saying he refused to travel in a bulletproof “sardine can” vehicle because he wants to mingle with ordinary people.

“It is true that anything can happen, but let’s face it, at my age I have nothing to lose,” the 77-year-old pontiff said.

The former archbishop of Buenos Aires was also asked how he would like to be remembered as a pope.

“I have not thought about that,” Francis said. “But I like it when you remember someone and say ‘He was a good guy, he did what he could, and he was not that bad.’ I would be happy with that.”