‘Camp of the Saints’ Seen Mirrored in Pope’s Message

Pope Francis is urging America to throw open her borders to thousands of impoverished migrants, in part to atone for the “sins” of the colonial era.

“We must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible,” he declared before a joint session of Congress. “Thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities…We must not be taken aback by their numbers.”

The call was not entirely unexpected.

“America Atone,” read The Drudge Report’s banner story upon the Pope’s arrival to the White House a day before his historic Congressional address.

The headline linked to a Bloomberg piece entitled, “Obama to Bask In Pope’s Aura, But Francis Wants Economic Justice.” The article predicted the Pope would aim to “exploit” his “moral authority” to “pressure his host” nation on issues including mass immigration and wealth redistribution.

Indeed, as the Pope addressed the nation today it is clear that the immigration issue has hit a boiling point. Headlines blare:

European Migrant Crisis: Austria, Germany Near Tipping Point… As Europe Grasps For Answers, More Migrants Flood Its Border… Pope Francis Urges Congress To Embrace Migrants… Western and UN Aid Falling Far Short… Five More Fleets On The Way, From Africa, India and Asia… Refugee Fleet Is Headed For Europe, For France…

The last three headlines, however, are ripped not from today’s papers, but from the pages of a controversial 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail, which many say has predicted with shocking accuracy the events unfolding today.

The novel, which has been translated into English, is entitled Camp of the Saints, and posits that the liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself. Raspail’s thesis, quite simply, is that liberalism is inadequate to defend liberalism.

All around the world, events seem to be lining up with the predictions of the book. The novel features a new pope, born in Latin American, who is “in tune with the times, congenial to the press” who preaches “universal love” and calls on the Western world to open its borders to the world’s migrants. Now, as in the novel, prominent political officials are urging on ever larger waves; secular and religious leaders hold hands to pressure blue collar citizens to drop their resistance; media elites and celebrities zealously cheer the opportunity that the migrants provide to atone for the alleged sins of the West–for the chance to rebalance the wealth and power of the world by allowing poor migrants from failed states to rush in to claim its treasures.

Raspail argues that the inability of the Western conscience to erect walls, to “put her foot down,” to turn people away, will lead to the undoing of Western civilization itself.

As the world’s eyes turn to the U.S. arrival of the pope, many conservatives are arguing that Jean Raspail’s book has perhaps come to life.

As Pat Buchanan recently wrote:

Will the West endure, or disappear by the century’s end as another lost civilization? Mass immigration, if it continues, will be more decisive in deciding the fate of the West than Islamist terrorism… Does Europe have the toughness to seal its borders and send back the intruders? Or is Europe so morally paralyzed it has become what Jean Raspail mocked in “The Camp of the Saints”?

{snip}

The religious community plays a vital role in the West’s demise. Religious figures–“bleeding hearts puking out gospels galore”–encourage the incursion. A global ecumenism receiving a new gospel of  “a world reborn, one race, one religion, no more exploitation of man by man, death to Western imperialism, universal love and brotherhood, and a thousand other goodies of the same confection.”

No one plays so central a role as the Papal figure in the book who bears several surprising similarities to Pope Francis.

In the book, the fictional Pope, who hails from Latin America, represents a “new-style church.” The Cardinals chose him as a symbol “for the universal church”.

The media relishes every opportunity to describe the humble and wealth-eschewing pope, “living on a can of sardines, eating with a plain tin fork, in a makeshift kitchenette up under the Vatican eaves . . . What a fine front-page story!” Raspail writes.

When Western leaders confront the pope and warn him that his fanaticism for redistributing wealth would hurt many members of his flock, he passionately replies that, “poverty is all there is worth sharing.” Whenever global crisis demanded it, the pope would sell his tiara and his Cadillac, which “morally . . . only proved how rich he really was, like some maharaja disposed by official decree.”

Similarly, today’s media has found itself in a love affair with the “people’s pope.” Just this week, CNN fawned: “A master of symbolism, Francis quickly dispensed with the fancy red slippers that popes wore. He moved into a small apartment in the Vatican and put the papal Mercedes in the garage, favoring a 20-year-old Renault with 190,000 miles on it.”

{snip}

In Raspail’s dystopia, upon the news that the fleet’s arrival was close at hand, the fictional Pope ordered “all objects of value still contained in the palaces and museum to the Vatican to be placed on immediate sale, with the proceeds going entirely to aid and settle the Ganges refugees once they have landed.” His Holiness is described as kneeling before a, “Brazilian crucifix with a figure of Christ that looks like Saint Che himself.”

The fictional pope then sent out a communiqué urging the West to open up its hearts and its borders to the coming migrants:

We beseech our brethren in Jesus Christ to open their hearts, souls, and worldly wealth to all these poor unfortunates whom God has sent knocking at our doors. There is no road save charity for a Christian to follow. And charity is no vain word. Nor can it be divided, or meted out little by little. It is all, or it is nothing. Now, at last, the hour is upon us . . . The hour when all of us must answer the call of that universal love for which Our Lord died on the cross, and in whose name He rose from the dead.

In an address before Congress today, Pope Francis delivered a similar message–calling on Americans to pay for the “sins” of the colonial era by opening up their borders to the world’s migrants:

We must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible . . . Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War . . . On this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities . . . We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal. We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

{snip}

The novel ends ominously. As Western nation after Western nation throws open her doors and descends into chaos as influxes of migrants pour in–“push[ing] on still further” and displacing each nations’ tolerant, former inhabitants.

The last line of the book recounts the “melancholy words” at last drummed into the narrator’s mind: “The fall of Constantinople is a personal misfortune that happened to all of us only last week.”