To my knowledge, what he's said was that he and/or the quote was misunderstood. That didn't help John Lennon much either, as I recall.

My opinion is that, consistent with the "glass houses" principle, this rookie pope shouldn't even be trusted with a bag of marshmallows, if this is his way of addressing the issues. More than enough rhetoric has been added to fuel this particular fire. If my limited knowledge of history tells me anything, the actions of Christians, Catholics especially, and their (our, actually) leaders have contributed a lot to the present situation.

The other part, about the cumulative effect of small, hateful actions, was basically a more general statement, but I thought it fit well into my comment on the specific controversy as a sort of prologue.

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