April 23, 2025 article from the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
“Encyclicals such as Laudato Si and Fratelli tutti resonate because they strike a chord as unique messages in a world that has been rolling towards Trump and Musk, and towards all forms of racism and xenophobia,” wrote Jean-Luc Mélenchon (French politician and leader of the moderate left-wing La France Insoumise political party) upon the announcement of the pope’s death. According to the “Gospel of Jean-Luc,” Francis (in this world, people are called by their first names) worked to make history “a raw material for the human phenomenon. And then hell might well have to retreat.” “He was on the side of the dispossessed, an ardent defender of peace in Palestine,” added his friend Éric Coquerel (French politician representing La France Insoumise).
The newspaper L’Humanité mourns on its front page the death of the man who reigned “in the name of peace, migrants, and the Holy Spirit.” Marine Tondelier (French politician who works as the National Secretary of The Ecologists, the Green Party of Europe), a green soul, is particularly fond of the papal address Laudate Deum, which denounced the devilry of climate change. The socialist mayor of Marseille has fond memories of this pope from Argentina, the country of soccer, celebrating Mass at the legendary OM stadium.
Above them, François Hollande (a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017) has a thought for his former counterpart, the late head of state of the Vatican, who, as a good environmentalist, would have fought alongside him for the Paris Agreement, which all the powerful and influential have now abandoned!
More curious is to hear our former comrade Olivier Besancenot (a French far-left political figure and trade unionist) join the chorus of regret on France-Inter radio: “In the new world in which we are evolving,” the pope’s death is a “major political event,” and his absence will be felt by the world. Even if, he adds, somewhat Jesuitically, he “does not idealize him either.” For someone we knew as a bit more of a red devil than that, the paths to the holy of holies of the institutional left’s paradise are somewhat tortuous.
Let us remain faithful to hell, where the workers and the poor of the planet are plunged, and from where the flames of revolution will rise: “Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune […] the International will be the human race!”
Olivier Belin
