Pope Francis I Speaks on Holocaust, Israel and Jews in Only Book

[ucrdem]

2. Now this is intriguing.

Some notable Catholic clerics and thinkers have been discovered, or at least convincingly argued, to have been conversos whose families converted from Judaism under compulsion real or virtual in the 12th-15th centuries. Barotolomé de Las Casas, the 16th century Salamancan priest and "protector of the Indios," comes to mind. I came across a fairly recent (07?) NYU dissertation arguing that Las Casas, like Columbus, was likely a son of conversos whose family histories gave both of them a sense of messianic purpose, in Las Casas' case working itself out by the convert becoming the converter.

And a great converter he was. Why Las Casas hasn't been made a saint I don't know but I imagine it has something to do with the unsavory truths he published about the Spanish encounter with los indígenas americanos, which for centuries after his death in 1566 were considered wild fabrications and defamations, and still are in Spain, notwithstanding that demographers in recent decades have concluded that he was telling the appalling truth.

Anyway I see this as a sign that Francis, whether or not there were conversos in his family, comes to Rome ready to hit the ground running and won't have to spend years reinventing that particular wheel.