World Youth Day and the France Attacks, or why it’s important that Francis got the ‘piecemeal third world war’ from Korea

Returning to the press greeting en route to Kraków, we learn from Francis that the ‘piecemeal third world war’ is whatever has succeeded ‘the war of ‘14, with its methods; then that of ‘39-‘45, another great war in the world’: ‘and now there is this one.’ But if it is true that the Armenian Genocide (from the first world war) and the cruelty of Auschwitz (from the second world war) are not over in the sense that ‘where there is war, the same thing is happening,’ then it follows that Francis is talking about a political geography with a history much longer than Islamic militarism:

I don’t like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy… this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law… and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence . . . and no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything. There are violent persons of this religion… this is true: I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them. (In-flight press conference from Kraków to Rome, 31 July 2016).

I’m sure this, as well as the statement that the piecemeal third world war is not a ‘war of religion’, sounds like a cop-out, as Rocha suggests. My argument, which I hope to advance in the next several posts, is that it is anything but a cop-out, although the Bishop of Rome (I will also claim) is also advancing a flawed account of contemporary political geography.

To begin this argument, we must learn the origins of Francis’s use of this phrase, ‘piecemeal third world war.’