βοΈ MEMENTO MORI β Tuesday, April 22, 2025 β C&C NEWS π¦
A C&C special edition about Pope Francis' sudden and unexpected death.
Good morning, C&C, itβs Tuesday! Breaking events required a special Coffee & Covid special edition on the worldβs biggest storyβ the sudden and unexpected death of Pope Francis.
π WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY π
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Yesterday morning, even as I unknowingly typed up Mondayβs post, history unfurled the biggest story in the world. Yahoo News ran a piece under the bland but informative headline, βPope Francis dies at 88 from stroke and heart failure.β The Pontiffβs mortal end came suddenly and unexpectedly. In one of several related New York Times stories, the Gray Lady said simply, βFrancisβ death at 88 was shocking.β Just like that, the leftβs favorite Pope was gone.
βAt 7:35 this morning,β Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced, βthe Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.β Only one day before βEaster Sundayβ il Papa was riding around St. Peterβs Square in his Popemobile, blessing believers.
Thereβs a lot to say about this generation-defining story. We could, for instance, look at the lying media coverage. Corporate media reports seemed to deliberately miss the mark; they focused on βanguishedβ believers, when true Christian theology requires celebration at the conclusion of a long lifeβs work leading the flock. βAbsent from the body,β Paul assured us, βtogether with the Lord.β
Or, we could consider the tectonic political implications. The Pope of Rome is one of the most influential unelected figures on Earth. This one wielded that immeasurable influence far beyond theology, to coordinate secular policies like globalism, technocracy, interfaith, immigration, climate change, and even individual medical choices. In life, Francis was personally involved in nearly every major world event, like the negotiations over Ukraine and the Middle East.
Will his successor double down on politics? Or will he pull back and promote spiritual development over secular worldliness?
Or, we could consider any of the many conspiracy theories flooding social mediaβs digital airwaves. Our Q (QAnon) friends found it darkly significant that the Popeβs final official visitor was Vice President JD Vance on Easter (the Pope was in feisty mood and quibbled about U.S. immigration policy). Others grabbed at the fact that the Popeβs sudden, unexpected, and shocking death came within the same 24-hour period as Klaus Schwabβs real retirement, which also arrived suddenly and unexpectedly (more on that soon).
There are even bigger conspiracy theories. My text messages buzzed all day with excited references to βSt. Malachyβs Prophecy,β a 10th- (or 16th-) century monkβs prediction that the next Pope (the 112th) will be the final one before Rome is destroyed and the World ends. I was surprised by how many folks were aware of the prediction, down to details such as that the late Pope selected his papal name based on St. Francis of Assisi (1226) β whoβd apparently indirectly endorsed the St. Malachy prophecy with his own similar End Times prediction.
If that grabs you, there are many other coincidental facts to noodle over. But in short, a whole bunch of folks think the Popeβs death could literally signal the End of the World and they will be hawkishly watching the selection of his replacement. Itβs a big story.
Sure, we could delve into any of those fascinating facets. But Iβd like to focus on a whole different angle. The Bishop of Rome, Earthly Father to 1.3 billion Catholics, the Vicar of Christ, was also one of the worldβs top vaccine salesmen, crushing the next closest performerβs paltry record. And his death could not have been any more ironic, even if it had been prophetically predicted by Pfizer.
Which, in a sense, it was.
π In 2021, as vaccine mandates began to bloom and spread like black mold spores, Pope Francis drove to his Popemobile to the jab clinic, getting his first shot right away on January 14, 2021. Remember that date.
Retired Pope Benedict would expire the following December 31, 2022, of, let me get this straight, βcardiogenic shock resulting from respiratory failure that evolved from a parenchymal insufficiency.β It was a masterpiece of medical obfuscation concealing the real reason for the old Popeβs death, if they even knew what it was.
But Benedict is a side story. He was, after all, 95 (albeit quite sprightly and cognitively sharp until the very end).
Benedictβs replacement, Pope Francis, took two more shots, surmounting the dreadful third benchmark in early 2022. Meanwhile, racing enthusiastically out of the gate in December 2020, even before his first one, the Pope began hawking jabs like there was no tomorrow. Most destructively, the Vaticanβs doctrinal office gave Catholics formal permission, saying it was somehow βmorally acceptableβ for Catholics to get the coronavirus vaccine, even if the jabs had been developed using cell lines from aborted fetuses.
(Donβt think too hard about that logic, it will just give you a papal migraine.)
Using his mega-megaphone, the Pope guilt-tripped the faithful into taking the shots. He βlaunched a powerful appeal for people to get vaccinated, calling it an βact of love.ββ
CLIP: Pope and his team urge Catholics to get mRNA jabs (3:00).
The Pope and his team of Cardinals and Archbishops explained to the faithful that the jabs were safe and effective, and getting them was a performative act of obligatory charity, a βsimple and profound way to care for the most vulnerable.β He said that vaccines βbring hope to end the pandemic, but only if we collaborate with one another.β Francis urged Catholics to get the shots, calling it a βmoral obligation.β
In other words, take one for the team.
Francis also labeled vaccine skepticism βsuicidalβ βa mortal sin in Catholic theologyβ and railed against sinful misinformation. "Frequently people let themselves be influenced by the ideology of the moment, often bolstered by baseless information or poorly documented facts," the Pope said, calling for governments to adopt a "reality therapy" to stop βthis distortion of human reason.β
It was a difficult setback for the resistance to the jabs.
π During the pandemic, my dedicated team and I did everything we could think of to help unfortunate workers facing mandates. I personally published several guides on how best to write legally effective religious exemption requests and avoid an HR minefield. I lectured in countless Zoom sessions, for up to a hundred attendees per session, patiently answering questions from uncountable terrified folks facing βvaccinate or terminateβ policiesβ including many Catholics.
Thanks to Pope Francis, Catholics faced a special problem. Instructions for submitting religious exemption requests often carved Catholics out, and specifically asked them to respond to the Popeβs βdirectivesβ to get jabbed, and to the Vaticanβs official policy that believersβ abortion concerns were theologically unfounded. This problem could be navigated, but it was very tricky.
As a result, many Catholicsβ valid religious exemptions were denied because they answered the papal question wrong.
While Pfizer had marketing budgets and government contracts, Francis enjoyed papal moral authority. He didnβt appeal to efficacy or studies. He decreed the jabs were βan act of loveββa spiritual duty. It was medical persuasion handed down from on high. By declaring vaccines a moral obligation, he cut the legs out from Catholics seeking religious exemptions. In other countries, his decrees were cited by governments and employers to justify coercion.
Francis didnβt just sell the shot. He sanctified it.
Francis became the religious face of vaccine campaignsβ especially in vaccine-hesitant regions like Latin America, Africa, and the U.S. Bible Belt. No other pope was ever so aligned with a for-profit, secular medical policy. Unsurprisingly, Francisβs messaging wasnβt just quotedβit was canonized in media coverage. He was deified as a lone voice of reason in a sea of scientifically illiterate anti-vaxxers. The New York Times didnβt run any op-eds mocking Pfizerβs Popeβ they handed him a megaphone.
But the problems people were experiencing with religious exemption questions were nothing compared to the Popeβs own rapidly expanding battle with personal health problems.
π It started almost immediately. Pope Francis got his first shot on January 14, 2021, and the next week, canceled all his public appearances, citing horrible sciatic nerve pain. Autoimmune? Inflammatory? βSciatica is very painful, very painful! I donβt wish it on anyone,β he said at the time.
Now that you can see where Iβm going, we should pause to consider the mediaβs excuse. Itβs already been deployed, since they saw this coming a long way off. When he was 21, Pope Francis had part of his lung removed, giving media cover to run headlines saying things like βThe Popeβs Long History of Health Problems.β Except they overlook the fact that, apart from the youthful surgery, he had no respiratory problems until 2023.
Youβre used to seeing the Pope in a wheelchair, but he walked fine before January 2021. Then it was, as they say, all downhill on the wheelchair ramp.
After his January bout with sciatica, the summer of 2021 brought Pope Francis colon surgery for a new diverticulitis diagnosis, which was confounded by surgical complications. He wound up staying 11 days in the hospital.
His relief from recovering from his colon surgery was short-lived. Six months later, in January 2022, he was back on the puny list, this time complaining of knee problems. By February, he was canceling events due to his knee pain, and needed help on stairs. By April, the Vatican reported the Popeβs doctors told him to stop trying to walk. The Pontiff would never walk normally again.
In May, he had his first knee procedure (some kind of injection) and appeared in his new papal wheelchair. Through the rest of 2022, in spite of sitting, the Pope would continue to cancel appearances on and off on account of disabling knee pain that resisted treatments and physical therapy.
Like some kind of dark clockwork, in January of 2023, right on schedule, the Pope announced his inflammatory diverticulitis had come back. A month later, Francis canceled several events citing a βstrong cold,β and by March, the cold put him in the hospital for βsome days.β
In June β23, the Pope returned to the hospital, this time for more abdominal surgery, except for a different reason: βto repair an incisional hernia.β He recovered in the hospital for 8 days. The public explanations of the βincisional herniaβ were all rather murky. A few months later in November β23, the Pope canceled yet more events for a βmild fluβ that required intravenous antibiotics.
2024 seemed to bring some relief, at least until December, when the Pope fell in his bedroom and got a large hematoma on his right cheek. Or at least, βa fallβ was the offered explanation. That bloodspot was the beginning of the end.
Two weeks later, Francis had another bloodspot, this one on his arm, also blamed on a fall. Photos from his scheduled appearances show him wearing a white sling. In February, he spent over a week in the hospital for bronchitis. He was quickly re-hospitalized and spent half of March and most of April under hospital care for a respiratory tract infection that developed into double pneumonia.
Francis was finally discharged late Saturday to attend Easter events.
Then yesterday morning, as already noted, Pope Francisβ years of pain and suffering ended abruptly with a sudden and unexpected stroke and βirreversible cardiocirculatory collapse,β whatever that is.
Paraphrasing Mark Twain, the Pope died long and slow until he died all at once.
π For jab watchers, it could not possibly be more obvious. The Popeβs health problems started within days of his first shot. And he went steadily, painfully downhill, as he continued with his second shot and then his special Fauci booster. And all his conditions reflect things we have learned to expect: systemic autoimmune, inflammatory, neurological, and cardiac conditionsβ followed by SADS.
π Itβs interesting to wonder about why Pope Francis stopped at three. Is it possible that, watching the Popeβs rapidly declining health, the Vaticanβs doctors got buyerβs remorse? The magical health juice was just producing problems? Either way, just months after its vaccine passport policy started, in 2022, the Vatican quietly added a βnatural immunityβ exception to its vaccine mandate, which effectively ended it (though it wasnβt formally rescinded till last year).
In March 2022, the Vatican confirmed mediaβs inquiries that Pope Francis had his booster (his third shot) but βand this is the most curious fact of allβ the Pope and the Vatican never got on the booster train, and never encouraged Catholics to βstay fully vaccinated.β The papal jab train halted without notice in early 2022.
No act of love accompanied the bivalent booster. No moral imperative engaged for shot numbers 4, 5, or 6. Not even, or in spite of, the science.
Weβll never know. Weβll never know because they will never admit the jabs were anything but βsafe and effective,β as the Pope had so often urged his worldwide flock. But it seems clear Pope Francisβ early messaging was not just morally coercive, but strategically deceptive: He pressured the whole world to do something he himself later stopped doing, without any explanation or apology.
Hereβs the dreadfully ironic nub: the worldβs leading vaccine salesman has become its most prominent implicit accuser. He didnβt need to recant. He didnβt need to apologize. His body did the talking.
The man who urged billions to roll up their sleevesβwho called it an act of love, a moral dutyβspent his final years in painful, cascading decline, hobbled, sickened, and ultimately silenced. And though the Vatican refuses to release the records, the silence around his boosters says more than any press release could. He stopped after three. No more acts of love. Just four years of suffering, and then the final stillness.
He stands now, in death, as a kind of cautionary relic. Not just a pope, but a memento mori for the biomedical faithful: a shocking reminder that itβs one thing to bless the altar, and another to lie under it.
π Among the many headlines about the Popeβs death today, you will find all the grotesque, mendacious cover stories about the Popeβs βlong history of respiratory struggles.β Thatβs the narrative, but believe me, they know.
We all know. And we will never, ever forget.
The same people who once shouted βtrust the scienceβ are now whispering, βdonβt ask too many questions.β But it is too late for that. The damage is done. The records are sealed. The man is gone. What remains is an awkward silence where there should have been confession. We pray the Popeβs sinsβunforgivable in this worldβwill be forgiven in the next.
Have a terrific Tuesday! My goodness, thereβs so much good news to cover. Letβs reconvene tomorrow morning to get caught up on all the breaking essential news and commentary.
Donβt race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nationβs needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: β Learn How to Get Involved π¦
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The stroke-induced death of man who promoted stroke-inducing injections is not shocking.
Powerful story Jeff and am proud of you for posting this