tradition on number of issues delivering his annual christmas message to tens of thousands in st. peter s square. i ask the savior of the world to look upon our brothers and sisters in iraq and syria who too long suffered effects of ongoing conflict and those who belong to ethnic and religious groups are suffering brutal persecution. truly there are some tears this christmas. together with the tears of the infant jesus. joining with us more on this is father jonathan morris, fox news religion contributor. of the father jonathan, so nice to see you. merry christmas to you. hard to say merry christmas when you know there is so much suffering. we saw pope francis choking up. leah: on his heart and mind christians being persecuted. he there are clearly those being persecuted around the world but pointed to those in the middle east. he made a call to refugee
this morning pope francis reminded the world that many people are suffering this christmas day. the pope addressed tens of thousands in st. peter s square during his traditional christmas blessing and said conflicts in the middle east are driving too many people from their homes. translator: i ask him, the savior of the world, to look upon our brothers and sisters in iraq and in syria who for such a long time have been suffering the effects of ongoing conflict and who together with those belonging to other ethnic and religious groups are suffering a brutal persecution. cnn s vatican analyst john
i was speaking to a young mother before this program. she said she watched what happened in ferguson. she said, don, i sat done and watched you. i real ied my kids needed to see this. i realized my kids needed to see this. this is history in the making. had i been around during the civil rights movement. i would have wanted my parents to sit me in front of the television. what do you make of what is going on in america. do you think, obviously progressed in some ways. i would look to got your take on that. well, the big, the big take. is that well are frying to say we are an empire. we are spread all over the word. we are spending fortunes on foreign wars and mant nanintena foreign bases trying to control, police the world, control through regime change. propaganda, news. giving our young people a view of the world with america as the the savior of the world. which is what woodrow wilson called it. we can t be. we have to look at the world through humbler eyes.
the christmas period in general is a liturgical one, that jesus was born on christmas eve, the savior of the world. we heard from the pope in his homily today, the message that jesus was also born into poverty, that he is the light that brightens the darkness. he said throughout the past nine months of his papacy, pope francis has emphasized the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the left fortunate and his message on christmas is no different. on saturday he addressed the governing body of the roman catholic church there and emphasized the importance of the church s service, that he wants a governing body that gets out into the community and actually helps the people. then he led by example, spent the next three hours at a local hospital visiting sick children, meeting with their doctors, bringing christmas cheer. then yesterday, there was this
preserver, but a lot of us think it was filled with lead. what prevented was the humiliation he was about to have in the congress on the question of whether or not he would support the war. right now we have a country where we don t believe anybody s leading anything. john? i would say we ve just been watching one of the single most inept supposed of presidential leadership in our lifetime. really? absolutely. he fumbled this thing so badly, it ends up being a handoff to vladimir putin. who now runs the world. right, he s the savior of the world who s on his way to iran to do a deal there on their nuclear program, which will not be good for the united states and the west. he took snowden in, obama insulted him. four weeks ago on this show, greg, our friend here, doug schoen said that the comment the president made about putin, he s the kid slouching in the back of the class, that would cause a backlash from putin.