Pope Francis has refused to describe Islam as “terrorist”, because it is “not fair and not true”.
Francis was asked by reporters on the papal plane returning to Rome from Poland why he never used the word “Islam” when condemning killings by extremists like that of an elderly priest in France last week.
“If I speak of Islamic violence, I should speak of Catholic violence. Not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent,” Pope Francis said, dismissing Daesh as a “small fundamentalist group” not representative of Islam as a whole.
“In almost all religions there is always a small group of fundamentalists,” even in the Catholic Church, the pope said, though not necessarily physically violent. “One can kill with the tongue as well as the knife.”
“Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person. This is fundamental terrorism, against all humanity,”
