The late Pope Francis stood apart as a Christian leader willing to condemn international atrocities. 

Hopefully everybody’s heard the unsettling news and fully appreciated the great compassion of our world leaders. All have chimed-in, on a united front, over the tragic terrorist violence in Pahalgam, India, condemning the attack in which 26 people—mostly tourists—died.

Among the most vocal were Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladmir Putin, who spoke almost in unison on the gravity of the killings and of how the perpetrators would be brought to justice.

You’ve got to be kidding! Can we really believe that life, to either of these monsters, is something of value? Their own killing sprees have been going on for years and neither is sincere about ending the bloodshed.

While expressing his grief over the India killings, in the same 24-hour period, Netanyahu was busily murdering another 71 Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Russians had lost more than 1,100 of their own armed forces; and the average daily number of Ukrainian civilian deaths had reached its predictable three or four dozen.

One cannot fathom the pain and misery brought by another 24 hours of mayhem. It’s so much more than the actual victims. For each individual death, there are multiple lives disrupted and torn by the tragedy of loss and the economic disaster of fallen providers.

Words are cheap. Who is there to call out Putin and Netanyahu on their glib hypocrisy? With Pope Francis heading out into the cosmos, it seems that there’s no one left to decry the state-sponsored murder that’s so much a part of today’s world.

While other Christian leaders must shrink in the guilt of their own inaction, at least the Catholics can have pride in Pope Francis. He did speak out against the warrior chiefs who insist on conflict and killing. He was often the only one.

This isn’t the first time I’ve said it: If churches are supposed to be a moral foundation for the citizens of this country—and world—they have failed miserably in their mission. Who but Pope Francis can claim that the Christian churches they lead actually sought to provide moral leadership, and that it’s not OK to merely stand by and accept the atrocities of our world as the inevitable consequences of the devil’s skullduggery.

Let’s face it, it would have been far easier for the Pope to have joined with the others in doing and saying nothing. He could have simply ignored the horrors that have become the daily news for a weak and soul-less world. But he didn’t.

Perhaps Pope Francis’s greatest moment was the act of infuriating Benjamin Netanyahu, by sorely decrying the Israeli leader for his hate of Palestinians and his unfailing commitment to wiping them from the face of the earth. Today, in the privacy of Netanyahu’s luxurious villa, “Bibi” offers his own silent, angry eulogy, cursing the name of the one Christian leader who dared to call him out on his murderous inhumanity and his avowed purpose of depriving the Palestinians of their homeland and their lives.

Perhaps the other churches are simply waiting to see if the ICC can find a way to bring Bibi to justice. Execution would be an appropriate sentence and yet, the potential strength of world criminal law has been gutted by its most culpable standouts—the U.S. and Russia, who wish, themselves, to be spared the executioner’s blade.

There’s plenty of opposition to the perpetual killing of Arabs, but the supposedly moral can’t seem to find a voice to end it. Ukraine? Same problem. Religious leaders, who could likely help bring the war to an end, have been too busy reading their Bibles and saying prayers for the dead.

Every other Christian-in-name-only leader should be hanging his head in shame, understanding that they have all failed in the greatest admonitions of Jesus. To place blame where it belongs, the Christian leaders have disregarded the words of their supposedly worshiped and adored savior in order to protect themselves from the wrath of politics and the ominous threat of losing their tax-exempt status.

Yes, practicality and tax treatment have taken precedence over morality and the highest ideals of religious belief. Just think about how disappointed the one God—and all the rest—must be.

Believe me, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, Vishna and the rest of the gods are pissed as hell. One cannot claim to believe in and adhere to a religion, and then crap on its most essential doctrines.

“Thou shalt not kill” is universal to virtually all morality-based systems, so why are the religious leaders unable to speak out against the atrocities of government-sanctioned murder? If there is anything—anything at all—worth doing, the remaining leaders of Christian faiths and all other faiths should be following in the footsteps of Pope Francis, calling out the S.O.B mass murderers of this world who find no sanctity in the gift of life.

One must ask the question: While churches seem to thrive on the understanding that each of them is the only true faith, and that everyone else is wrong, aren’t there certain teachings that are universal?

How can there be such a uniform failure of religion to cry, in anger, “Enough is enough?”