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The Current Transcript for March 3, 2017

Host: Megan Williams

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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Russia, if you're listening—I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

MW: That was Donald Trump on the US presidential campaign trail last year—calling on Russia to hack his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He may have been joking then but as the connections between Team Trump and the Kremlin appear to grow as they have this week, so too does the pressure for answers. What, if any, is the connection between Trump, his people and Russia? We'll dive into that situation first up today. Then to Rome.

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Mysterious posters popped up in Rome Saturday. They asked the pontiff, “Where is your mercy?” The posters condemn the pope's actions against some conservative Catholics.

MW: This month marks four years for Pope Francis. But the backlash against the so-called “cool pope” appears to be growing in conservative Catholic circles and that backlash may be emboldened by the election of politicians like Donald Trump. We're taking stock of Pope Francis and the ripples he's causing in the Catholic world in half an hour. After that, to South Sudan where this UN World Food Programme worker is based.

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People are already dying. And so we have done everything possible to try to keep things from getting to this. But there's really only so much humanitarian relief can do without meaningful peace and security.

MW: The world's youngest country faces the first UN-declared famine in six years. That story in an hour. I'm Megan Williams and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Are Russian ties to Trump team a true cause for concern?

Guests: Mark Hosenball, Bessma Momani, Paul Robinson

MW: Just how far from Moscow is Washington, DC? It's a question that gets more difficult to answer with every day since the ascent of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Questions about coziness between the Kremlin and the new White House first emerged back during the election campaign. That's when a damaging hack into Democrats’ e-mails appear to have a Russian hand behind it. Since then, there's been a steady stream of Russian revelations. President Trump's original national security adviser Mike Flynn resigned over his lack of transparency about conversations with Russia and yesterday, it emerged that both Flynn and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner met with the Russian ambassador in December. Also yesterday, Trump's pick for US Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to face the glare of the press, admitting that he too had met with the Russian ambassador last year. That's despite appearing to say otherwise to senators last month. There were calls for his resignation but he stopped short of that, recusing himself from overseeing an inquiry into the Russian connections.

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I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for the president of the United States.

MW: And so just over a month into the Trump administration, questions about the Russian connection are mounting. Mark Hosenball is the senior national security correspondent for Reuters in Washington. We've reached him today in London, England. Hello.

MARK HOSENBALL: Hello. How are you doing?

MW: Fine, thanks. What do you think of Jeff Sessions recusing himself yesterday from the investigation into Russia's influence on the US election?

MARK HOSENBALL: Well, it does appear that at the very least, he wasn't entirely candid with Congress during his confirmation hearings about any contacts he had with Russia which he seemed to say he didn't have any. And he's now apparently admitting that he did have at least some contacts with Russia. So given that his department, you know and the FBI—which is part of the Justice Department—the FBI is certainly conducting a major counterintelligence investigation as well as at least two hacking investigations that we know of related to Russia and the election. It seems only appropriate that he should have recused himself. Whether it's really totally fair to demand his resignation, I don't know. The Democrats are clearly trying to capitalize on this is any way that they absolutely can. If it turns out his conversations with Russia did in any way touch on the election—hacking on the sanctions, anything of substance and some evidence to that effect emerges—then his troubles almost certainly will continue. And the Democrats are not going to let go of that one.

MW: Right. I mean it seems there's a new development every few days concerning the alleged connections between the Trump administration and Russia. How difficult is it for you to sort out the facts from speculation with this story?

MARK HOSENBALL: Oh, it's extremely difficult. I mean you know as you say there’s new revelations every day. But the problem is the revelations, the evidence does not necessarily back up the strength of the revelation. So you know there are all kinds of allegations anyway that somehow the Trump campaign not only was in contact with Russia before the election, but that they somehow colluded the campaign, somehow colluded with the Russians to hack this stuff or to put it out in a way to damage Hillary Clinton. The collusion allegation really is pretty clearly unsubstantiated at the moment or at least uncorroborated. And you know so there's a long way to go with this whole thing. On the other hand, this is such a hot topic that every little revelation becomes a big media sensation. That's probably legitimate, especially when Trump goes around screaming about fake news—sometimes about fake news that in fact is not fake. So I mean it's pretty heated material.

MW: So what do we know definitively at this point about these possible connections?

MARK HOSENBALL: Well, we know that some of Trump's—entourage I guess is the best way to say it—including Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, did have contacts with Russia. One of his campaign advisory team—who Trump himself publicly identified as a campaign adviser—somebody named Carter Page was in Moscow very shortly before the Republican National Convention and it was certainly alleged that he met with some weird people there. He's now issued a lengthy treatise complaint to the Justice Department saying he's been smeared and yeah well, he was in Moscow but he didn't do anything there. It is a fact because I recorded it myself and I had witnesses that during the Republican convention in Cleveland after Carter Page came back and Carter Page was at the convention, a conservative activist who was on the platform committee—the committee sending out Republican policies—proposed providing lethal weapons to anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. And Trump's operatives came forward and basically arranged for that proposal to be killed. And in fact, I think the person who proposed it told me that she was told that Donald Trump was personally consulted about this. So you know there was some political, I mean some strange things that happened there and there were evidently some strange contacts with Moscow. Flynn himself appeared, sat at Putin’s table I think in late 2015 for the 10th anniversary of the Russian propaganda TV network called RT or Russia Today.

MW: Right.

MARK HOSENBALL: And allegedly appeared on Russia Today a few times. So you know that's a little bit strange as well.

MW: Yeah. I mean as you say, this is a story that's incredibly charged politically and of course the stakes are high if any of it turns out to be true. I mean you've been covering Washington for what, decades now. How big of a story is this compared to the host of other political stories that you've covered?

MARK HOSENBALL: Well, I was right in the middle, literally in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky-Clinton story and I was right in the middle of the 9/11 you know response story after the attack on New York. And I don't know that this beats 9/11. It certainly beats Monica Lewinsky already, I would say. It’s going to go on for longer than Monica Lewinsky. And you know arguably if it turns out the Russians did with the collaboration of Donald or his entourage basically put stuff out that damaged Hillary Clinton, that could be, as they say, worse than Watergate.

MW: Now we have to go shortly. But do you have a sense of how this will play out?

MARK HOSENBALL: No. It's very, very, very unpredictable. I mean with Trump, you know you can't predict anything. The guy is totally unpredictable. He’ll say one thing one day and then five minutes later he'll say the opposite.

MW: Right.

MARK HOSENBALL: It’s very, very unpredictable and at the moment the Republicans control both houses of Congress. So that leads to suppression of serious investigation. But you know in two years the Democrats could take back one or both houses of Congress. That means that he could be in serious trouble.

MW: Okay. Alright.

MARK HOSENBALL: But we don’t know. It’s all unpredictable. It’s all unpredictable.

MW: Thanks very much, Mark Hosenball.

MARK HOSENBALL: Thank you.

MW: Mark Hosenball is the senior national security correspondent for Reuters in Washington. We reached him in London, England. We have two guests standing by to share their thoughts on the relationship between Moscow and Washington. Bessma Momani is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. She's in Waterloo, Ontario. And Paul Robinson is a professor in the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. He's in our Ottawa studio. Hello to you both.

PAUL ROBINSON: Hello.

BESSMA MOMANI: Hello.

MW: Bessma Momani, how concerning are these latest reports of contacts between Trump's team and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I think it's concerning particularly for the Americans and obviously there's so much background to this, particularly the fact that this may have been known to the Obama administration as early as the summer of 2016. And obviously I think Obama at the time, like many of us, thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win. And so perhaps it was a moot point although he did—we know in a meeting with Putin—actually warned him and said to cut it out quite literally. But you know then the election happened and Trump won. And then I think this is where things get really interesting because I think we don't talk very much about what should have Obama done? We are hearing some Democrats. I spent some time in Washington this weekend. Many Democrats talking about you know this really should have been exposed by Obama very early on. Why did he wait? Why didn't he speak out? Clearly they had some knowledge of it. But I think that people don't recognize how partisan the environment is in the country. And frankly, I think Obama if he tried to either annul or question the legitimacy of the election, it might have led to civil war. I mean this is really a Trump movement—which it is a movement—is not only well armed frankly. They're very well-tuned to conspiracy theories and it would have I think devastated the country from within. And so I think Obama did the right choice but there's a lot of reflection at the moment about you know what could have been done and why wasn't there a real investigation early on and stopping the Russians or at least exposing, I should say, Trump to the reality that he has been under the influence of the Russians for some time.

MW: Right. Paul Robinson, what have you been thinking as you've watched an increasing number of allegations over the Trump administration's ties to Russia?

PAUL ROBINSON: Well, personally I've been thinking a lot of this is frankly very silly. Mr. Sessions for instance, not just met the Russian ambassador. He met the ambassadors of 25 other countries. So this is something he did as a perfectly normal part of his activities as a member of the Senate committee. And we would expect senior officials to meet with foreign officials and we would expect people who are running for office and hoping to win the election and become part of a new presidential administration to be speaking with foreign countries and finding out what they're interested in and what they want and so on because that is what you need to do if you're going to prepare seriously for office. So there's absolutely nothing untoward about what this. What is strange is the hysteria which has been created by this to the degree that you're having people saying that just speaking to Russians is a sign of treason and people are seriously accusing the Trump administration of treason for what is really a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to do. And the degree to which you know speaking to Russians has become toxic and treasonable is really quite bizarre.

BESSMA MOMANI: May I add to that?

MW: Sure. Go ahead.

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, you know I mean look. Sessions is on the Armed Services Committee. But remember here, Sessions, of the 10 or 12 people who are on the Armed Services Committee, is the only one that met with the Russian ambassador in his office twice. And the second thing is yes, Sessions met with 25 other ambassadors—the Canadian ambassador, the Polish ambassadors—but they're all NATO partners.

PAUL ROBINSON: He also met with the Ukrainian ambassador.

BESSMA MOMANI: Yeah but remember here: that is not an enemy frankly. And they're talking about interoperability NATO has on the front line of Ukraine. It's clearly concerned about Ukraine. I mean it does not make sense that if the majority of what he's met are NATO partner ambassadors and then he's met with them twice, that's really quite peculiar. And more importantly, it's not illegal to meet foreign officials. There's nothing wrong with that. It's about lying about it under oath and that's where I think this is really getting the Trump administration hot water, from Flynn to now Sessions, to who knows next.

MW: Bessma Momani, how do you think then that the US should respond to these alleged attempts at interference by Russia if indeed that was what was going on with Sessions?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I think the reality is right now we are under the Trump administration and so it has really got a partisan and perhaps even a personal vested interest in Trump. We don't have his tax returns. No one knows what is the extent of involvement here. Is there as the British intelligence report that was released as part of the opposition research to the DNC, is it true that there is some compromising evidence against Trump? All of that is unknown. And I think that's really the challenge here. Now of course Sessions recusing himself from the FBI investigation into the campaign is a good thing. But remember here: Sessions actually runs the FBI. He is the ultimate boss and I don't think it's really easy to have an internal investigation against your boss or into having complicit—perhaps your boss is complicit in something. And so what the Democrats are asking for is an independent third party evaluation and I think this is warranted under the severity of this potential interference by a foreign power.

MW: Paul Robinson, do you think that Russia poses a high, serious danger to the American political system right now?

PAUL ROBINSON: No, I think that's ridiculous. The American political system is you know quite strong. And the idea that you know Russia—which is a comparatively much weaker or poor country—could somehow destabilize America all by itself is preposterous. If anyone is destabilizing it, it is the Americans themselves and to go back to what was just said, I think when you start labeling Russia as “the enemy”, you're in very dangerous territory. When you say that you can only speak to your friends but to speak to people with who you have differences is somehow dodgy and a sign of corruption and that's extremely dangerous too. If anybody, the people we need to speak to are the people with whom we have differences. And it’s quite correct normally we'd expect that. And to regard the idea of you mustn't speak to Russians because Russians are the enemy and speaking to them is practically treason, this is really not a line we want to go down on. And I'm very worried by it, to be frank.

MW: But do you think that they did try to influence the American election?

PAUL ROBINSON: Well, I mean it's possible. People try to influence people all the time. That's a perfectly normal part of international affairs. Having said that, the actual evidence which is being put forward for this is—well, actually it hasn't been put forward—there have been a lot of allegations. The director of national intelligence put out a document to this effect but it didn't actually include any facts. It was just a series of statements that we believe this or we have high confidence in this or for the NSA, only had moderate confidence in it. But no actual facts were included in this so we're relying entirely upon the assessment of members of the intelligence community without actually seeing any of the data on which they’ve based that. And so we cannot tell and the other thing which came out was this dossier released by The Daily Beast, which was frankly ridiculous.

MW: That was the spy dossier?

PAUL ROBINSON: The spy dossier, which really was quite preposterous and absurd. So we don't actually have the evidence to tell one way or another here.

MW: Right. But Paul Robinson, I mean there's another issue going on here, which of course is the question of fake news. I mean Russia has been accused of running disinformation campaigns around the world. How would you compare outlets like Russia Today with other news sources?

PAUL ROBINSON: Clearly Russian television has its own biases and it has on occasion issued reports which turned out to be inaccurate and indeed false. However having said that, I don't think one can entirely clear the Western media of that. The biases which are apparent in Western media about Russia are quite extreme as well. And there's a lot of unreliable information being published. I mean this dossier for instance—which is published and got widespread publicity—is really an example of fake news. The Washington Post ran a whole piece on fake news which was based entirely upon a website called PropOrNot, which was run by anonymous people from anonymous sources and made a whole series of allegations at various websites and blogs and so on about Russian agents without finding any evidence. So this whole report in The Washington Post on fake news was itself fake news. So this is not something you know that Russia is uniquely guilty of.

MW: Well, that's another issue. I mean the word fake news is bandied about rather loosely these days. But Bessma Momani, Russia has dominated the political conversation in Washington. Is this in fact the Russian president Vladimir Putin wants? I mean is he is he scoring a success here by doing this?

BESSMA MOMANI: He is in many ways. Again, I agree with much of what Paul has said. And part of the reality is that the Russian economy is in decline. It's a classic petrostate. Oil prices are stagnating. It's not known for any real production innovation that I know of. It's got so much in terms of structural weakness, you know low business confidence, you name it. Wages are declining. Poverty rates are going up. Look, the reality is Russia is a declining power. But yet, we're talking about it. And by talking about it, this is really elevating the stature of Russia as though it is this great power.

MW: Thank you. I'm going to have to interrupt you there. I'm sorry. Thank you both.

PAUL ROBINSON: Okay, thank you.

BESSMA MOMANI: Thank you.

MW: Bessma Momani is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a political science professor at the University of Waterloo. She was in Waterloo, Ontario. And Paul Robinson is a professor in the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. He was in our Ottawa studio.

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MW: The CBC News is next. Then why Pope Francis may not be as universally beloved as you may think. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Are Catholic critics of Pope Francis strengthened by Trump's rise to power?

Guests: Massimo Faggioli, Father Thomas Reese, Catherine Clifford

MW: Hello. I’m Meghan Williams and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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MW: Still to come, it's the first time in six years that the United Nations has declared a famine, but what's happening in South Sudan isn't just the product of the weather.

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There was no catastrophe like this that really isn't manmade. It's not a drought. It's not a tsunami or an earthquake. It's not something that we hadn't been warning about now for several years.

MW: We'll go to Juba, South Sudan to hear more about why the world's youngest country is facing famine. That's in half an hour. But first, the cool pope versus his critics.

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[Sound: Crowd cheering]

And so the Cardinal from Argentina and now pope with the chosen name, Francis.

MW: Some of the excitement four years ago this month when the world first met the new Catholic pontiff, Pope Francis. People around the world were enamored with Francis' focus on the poor, climate change and migrants and his push for a more open, merciful church. But the world has changed a great deal over the past four years. Donald Trump is the United States president with his vow to build a wall on the Mexican border and crack down on illegal immigration and similar hard line politicians are gaining ground across Europe. But this pope appears to be standing his ground, even as more conservative Catholics perhaps emboldened by President Trump's election have become more vocal about their unease with the direction that Pope Francis is leading the church. We have three guests joining us to share their thoughts on the latest clashes emerging between the pope and more conservative Catholics. Massimo Faggioli is a professor in the department of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and contributing editor of Commonweal magazine, a lay Catholic journal. He's in Philadelphia. Father Thomas Reese is a Jesuit priest and senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. He is in Washington, DC. And Catherine Clifford is a professor and Catholic theologian at St. Paul University. She's in Ottawa. Hello, everyone.

MANY VOICES: Hello.

MW: I want to start with what the pope said last week, that it's better to be an atheist than a bad Christian. Father Thomas Reese, what did you think when you heard that from the pope?

FATHER REESE: Well, I am not surprised by that kind of language. This pope is much more interested in what theologians call ortho practice—in other words acting like a Christian rather than orthodoxy—talking, you know doctrinal issues. He's putting the emphasis back on how Christians act in their lives. Are they loving? Are they kind? Are they forgiving? This is his priority. This is his priority.

MW: It’s clearly a criticism of hypocrisy. Catherine Clifford, what did the statement say to you?

CATHERINE CLIFFORD: Well, I think Pope Francis is really challenging people to live what they profess to live and to put into practice their Christian faith. And in a sense in making the parallel with atheism, it's as if they're acting not like believing people, not like people who have faith.

MW: And Massimo Faggioli, did you think the Pope's statement was a veiled but pointed message at some perhaps conservative Catholics who are resisting his move for a more open and empathetic church?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Oh, I think there's no question about it. In Francis, there is a rejection of a medieval symbolism of the papacy that many American Catholics on the conservative side didn't like. But Francis starts talking in the first few days of his pontificate about two things. One, the poor and the Church of the poor and about mercy. And so that's when you start seeing that some Catholics were much more attached to Pope Benedict for example. They started reacting in a skeptical way to say the least.

MW: We've seen resistance from within the Vatican as well. I mean a few weeks ago in Rome, I saw all over the city there were dozens of these posters that had been slapped up with a very unflattering picture of Pope Francis. And underneath there was criticism about some of the reforms that he's made and the question of “Where is your mercy, Pope Francis?” Massimo Faggioli, where do you think those posters came from?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, if you're familiar with political campaigns, those posters are part of the tradition of the extreme right wing political circles in Italy and there has been in history, a convergence, a meeting of the minds between neo-fascist extreme right-wing circles in Italian politics and very conservative Catholic groups. So this is something not new. It is new these kind of attack on anonymous posters in the city of Rome. But that alignment is not new for Italian politics, is not new for Latin American politics for sure.

MW: And yet as you say, this pushback against the message of Pope Francis is coming from North America, from the United States in particular. I mean Catherine Clifford, how serious do you think the opposition to Pope Francis is right now?

CATHERINE CLIFFORD: Well, I think it's hard to judge. I think that some of this opposition, the size of it is amplified because it takes up a lot of air on the blogosphere. But I would say we haven't seen—there are always disagreements and criticism within the church but I don't think we've seen anyone so openly attack a pope in recent history. And I find this unfortunate because in many ways, many of the reforms that Pope Francis is carrying forward were begun by his predecessors. The effort to deal more responsibly with the challenges of sexual abuse by clergy—Pope Benedict already began reforms in this direction. Reform of the Vatican finances—this was already begun under the watch of Pope Benedict. And this is not a personal campaign or a personal agenda of Francis himself. He's doing it with the full support of many bishops around the Catholic world, in particular the college of cardinals who elected him.

MW: Now you say you've never seen attacks of this kind against a pope. Can you give me an example of what you're talking about?

CATHERINE CLIFFORD: Well, I'm referring to this poster campaign but there is very open criticism of Pope Francis in the blogosphere and challenges to his ability to lead the church and to be doctrinally orthodox, there are many people very unhappy with the direction of his teaching on these questions of human sexuality and family life. And so there are suggestions that he needs to be corrected and called back into line. And this is quite something I don't believe we've seen in recent history.

MW: Massimo Faggioli, are you seeing the same sort of shift in tone and level of attack against this pope?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: I don't remember or I've never read in the 20th century history of important or once important Catholic magazines like First Things for example in the West, calling or hinting at the fact that the pope is a heretic. That's new. That’s really new. What I would say though is that these recent posters, I wouldn't call it emboldened position. I would call it a radicalized position because if you follow them, they have become more radical and more isolated and building connections with unseemly political characters. That says something on the radically political nature of their criticism is not about theology very much. It’s about the social and the political message of Francis and his intention to change the status quo.

MW: Father Thomas Reese, I mean what do you think it is about Pope Francis's message that's drawing the ire of conservatives within the Catholic Church?

FATHER REESE: Well, I think first it's very important to emphasize that this opposition is coming from a very small group of what I would call elites, Conservative elites. If you look at the public opinion polls, 87 per cent of Catholics have favourable views of Pope Francis. Eighty-seven per cent. I mean I live in Washington. People down here would kill for those numbers. You know it's a conservative cabal that is taking on Pope Francis. And why are they doing that? The reason is because they have always wanted the Catholic Church and the evangelicals in the United States to be the Republican party of prayer. They have always seen this as an alliance and that's why they want the Catholic Church to forget about social justice, forget about the poor. Forget about the immigrants and the refugees and to talk only about abortion. Talk only about marriage and gay marriage and family issues. The issue’s whether they are closer to the Republican Party. That's why they're upset because Pope Francis is saying no, I'm not going to obsess over abortion and gay marriage. I'm going to talk about the poor. I'm going to talk about refugees who are drowning in the Mediterranean. These elites don't want that conversation going on in the Catholic Church because it doesn't help them politically.

MW: Right. Massimo Faggioli, I mean how successful do you think they've been in the United States with trying to shift the message back to things like abortion or their opposition to same-sex marriage? Can you tell me about some of the connections they've been making to the new US administration and if that's proving to be a dangerous due to Pope Francis or successful for them?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, it's hard to say. American Catholicism is very balkanized, very polarized. There's no question that there are some Catholics within the White House of Donald Trump who share this radical criticism of Pope Francis. And they have tried in the past to build connections with [inaudible] circles that are radically opposed to Pope Francis, like Cardinal Burke. The real problem or the ticking bomb is what's happening in the seminaries where the future priests are studying because there is where you have really the most concerning face of the opposition to Pope Francis.

MW: Why is that? Are you saying that a lot of the seminaries are controlled by a more conservative wing of the Catholic Church?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Yes, basically yes because it is relatively easy to change leadership in one diocese with a new bishop and new cardinal. It takes years or decades or generations to change theological education in the seminary and the seminaries have been shaped in a very, very deep way by John Paul the Second and Pope Benedict, in a direction that is very incompatible, I would say, with Pope Francis’ language, Pope Francis’ emphasis. That is where I'm really concerned—not about average Catholics, not about the White House. I mean the Catholic Church thinks in terms of centuries, and so the White House is going to change anyway in four or eight years. But the seminarians are going to be the future priests for the next half a century.

MW: Yeah, interesting. Catherine Clifford, do you share Massimo Faggioli’s concern about what's happening in the seminaries and the relationship between the hardliners in the Vatican and the Trump administration?

CATHERINE CLIFFORD: I think, it's interesting, I think that Professor Faggioli made an interesting comment about how balkanized or polarized the American Catholic community is. And it's true that seminary education is one of the places where seminaries have in the last generation, attracted a group of very conservative young men who will have an important influence on the Catholic Church in the US for some time. But I think it's important to recognize, even though there's this kind of ambiguity, Father Tom pointed out that Pope Francis enjoys a lot of support and is quite popular with American Catholics. But many of them still felt inclined to support Donald Trump in the American election campaign. Now the American Catholic Church is also almost half of it is a Hispanic church and so at least half of the members of the Catholic Church know some family member who might be an undocumented immigrant. And so I think many of the people who voted in favour of Donald Trump might now be quite concerned about how the agenda is rolling out. And now we see Catholic bishops stepping up and expressing deep concern about the policies towards immigration and the treatment of refugees. So it's a very complex profile and it will be interesting to see how they line up in the coming years.

MW: And Massimo Faggioli, you use the term “Trumpian Catholicism”. What do you mean by that?

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Well, as Father Tom said, for many American Catholics, their idea of Catholicism was the Republican Party in the Catholic Church. So that has been true for a couple of decades or three decades at least. The problem is that as we know, the Republican Party became much more radicalized in these last few years and those Republican Catholics, many of them followed the Republican Party in this radicalization process.

MW: Father Thomas Reese, what are your thoughts on that?

FATHER REESE: I think we also have to acknowledge that you cannot expect Catholics to be any more consistent in their thinking than anybody else. You know during John Paul the Second’s papacy, there were a lot of progressive Catholics who said some pretty nasty things about John Paul the Second and Pope Benedict. You know their rhetoric exceeded their Christian virtue. [laughs] So I'm not surprised by this. You know one of the real changes that has occurred here is that Pope Francis does not seem to care, does not seem to be afraid of open discussion and debate in the church. In fact, he encouraged it at the last Synod of Bishops. He told the bishops, hey, get up. If you disagree with me, stand up and say so. Well, he got what he asked for to some extent. Now that was not true under the last two papacies. If you disagreed with the pope, you were silenced. You lost your job in the seminary. And this is one of the problems with the seminaries today is so many good theologians were simply fired and removed from the seminaries and they were filled with “yes” men who were just part of this clerical culture. So Pope Francis has not only changed the focus and the emphasis in the church. He has also opened up discussion and debate. And now I don't think—if I applauded liberals who disagreed with Pope Benedict, how can I tell Cardinal Burke to shut up and sit down if he disagrees with Pope Francis? I think all Catholics have to be willing to have an open discussion in the church.

MW: Right. Right. Now, I mean Father Thomas Reese, just to follow up on that. I mean what's interesting is that a lot of the American Catholic leaders were fairly quiet during the election but they're now actually showing some resistance to Trump's message. They're offering up churches and places of sanctuary for those who may be deported, that kind of thing. Many of the people involved in this are clearly people who probably voted for Trump. So what has changed there, if anything?

FATHER REESE: Well, I think that's really fascinating because let's face it. If you listen to what Trump had to say at his inaugural speech and what he had to say at his address to Congress, there was absolutely nothing there for religious conservatives. There was nothing about abortion. There was nothing about family. It was all you know anti-immigrant. So for the bishops in the United States, Catholic bishops, it appears that Trump is not supporting their agenda on these family issues. But he is in fact attacking their flock. Their people. And you know because a lot of these Hispanics, a lot of these undocumented people are Catholics and you know there's real fear among these Catholics that they're going to be rounded up and shipped out of the country. And the bishops are responding. They're saying no, this is wrong. You can't do that. And so you've got bishops and priests instructing people about their legal rights.

MW: Catherine Clifford, I mean we've been mostly focused on North America here. But we know that the growth in the Catholic Church is in the southern hemisphere and most Catholics now are in the southern hemisphere. How is this shaping the pope's message?

CATHERINE CLIFFORD: Well, I think the very fact that we have a Latin American pope is a sign that the majority population of Catholics is in the south today and that the cardinals who elected him wanted the voice of those churches, those churches in the southern hemisphere to be heard and did not want the church to be guided by a European and a Northern agenda. And Pope Francis is someone who, as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, lived through a period of a complete economic collapse in Argentina and was quite familiar in his own pastoral ministry with the circumstances of the poor. And this is really the experience of the majority of Catholics today. So they're not hung up on moral issues. They're concerned about being able to make a living and live a dignified existence. And so I think that the questions of social and economic justice, questions of also climate justice—we know that the poor and women, people in these southern contexts also experience the most drastic effects of ecological change right now. And so all of these issues are now coming to the centre where they were not in the past. These are the concerns of the majority of Catholics throughout the world.

MW: Right. Father Thomas Reese, I mean what are your thoughts on this? Is there any shift occurring in the consciousness of North American Catholics as to what the most pressing issues are for most of the world?

FATHER REESE: I think that Pope Francis, because of his own background as a child of immigrants and also is his concern that comes out of his Latin American background, is very sensitive to these issues of poverty and the poor. You know he used to walk through the slums of Buenos Aires when he was the cardinal archbishop there and he'd sit in people's homes, listen to their stories and you know what he heard was people trying to live good Christian lives even though they were divorced and remarried. He heard stories from mothers who were worried about their daughters being kidnapped and trafficked. And so these became the issues that that he was concerned about. That's the fascinating thing about Pope Francis—is first he listens. He listens to the people and then he responds with a pastoral plan with programs and things like that. And I think you know that's the thing that bishops in the United States, I think, and clergy need to learn—to get with the program of Pope Francis.

MW: Okay. Well, thank you all very much.

FATHER REESE: Good to be with you.

CATHERINE CLIFFORD: Thanks for everything. Goodbye.

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Bye-bye.

MW: Massimo Faggioli is a professor of religious studies. Father Thomas Reese is with the National Catholic Reporter and Catherine Clifford is a professor at St. Paul University. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. I'm Megan Williams.

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Famine declared in South Sudan, thousands at risk of starvation

Guests: George Fominyen, Simona Foltyn, Jok Madut Jok

MW: Hello. I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] There’s just one water pump here and we are too many. We are just sleeping in the open with these strong winds blowing. We are exhausted and we are hungry and there's no food here.

MW: That's Monica William, one of the tens of thousands of South Sudanese people currently displaced within her own country. South Sudan may be the youngest country in the world, having gained its independence six years ago. But it also holds another sadder distinction. The United Nations has declared its first famine—anywhere in the world in the past six years—in South Sudan. According to the UN, some 100,000 people in the country are currently on the verge of starvation, while five million people—about half the country's population—are in need of urgent help. And the famine in South Sudan is man-made. Since its independence, the country has been rocked by internal divisions, economic collapse and now civil war. Many of its citizens have sought shelter in the bush, sleeping rough under the trees with little or no food and water. Here again is Monica William.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] I've been waiting since the morning to get water but there isn't enough for everyone and the quality is very bad. If you have money, you can buy food in the market. But the agencies haven't given us anything. So if you don't have money, you'll go to sleep hungry. If I had the money, I'd go back. I don't want to stay here. In my village, they are killing people. I don't have work and this land is foreign to me. What would I stay here for?

MW: George Fominyen is a communications officer with the World Food Programme. He was just in Unity State where famine has been declared. We've reached him in South Sudan's capital Juba. Hello.

GEORGE FOMINYEN: Hello.

MW: Can you tell me how some of the people you've seen are doing in South Sudan?

GEORGE FOMINYEN: I’m just back from [unintelligible] which is in [unintelligible] county. It is one of the counties where pockets of famine have been declared. And what I saw: a lot of women and children who looked very tired. They looked quite hungry and they told us that they have spent months on islands, on small islands on the Nile where they've been sheltering as a result of the conflict in the country in this particular area of the country. And they've not been able to eat properly. They have been relying on weeds and fish if they could catch it. As a result of this, sometimes what they eat causes diarrhea and they have no treatment at all. So it was for them a great relief to see that they were able to access some form of assistance at this point. It was quite difficult to see all these people looking that tired and weary.

MW: Now I know you spoke to a grandmother who was there with her grandson. Can you tell me about that story?

GEORGE FOMINYEN: Yes indeed. Very troubling story with this grandmother. She looked really tired. She said that they have been staying on one of these islands for several months and they don’t have enough to eat and so they have to prepare these weeds and waterlilies. And what that does is if [uintelligible] it becomes a real problem. They pick up infections or they have diarrhea and then become really sick. Now she had her son, her grandson who was about eight years old or so, but looked really, really, really bad, really sick. And she was telling me that she had to walk along carrying this boy because there was no alternative. They heard there was going to be assistance in Tonj. The mother of this boy said you need to go with my son and try so that he can get some help, whether it’s medical or food assistance, so that he can stay alive. And she had to stay behind, the mother of the boy because she just had a newborn baby barely two days before. So you can imagine that this woman is living on an island somewhere in the middle of this vast expanse of swamp.

MW: So what is the World Food Programme doing to try and help these people?

GEORGE FOMINYEN: So the teams I was with—the rapid response teams—and generally they are integrated which means they go along not only World Food Programme staff, but staff from other agencies including UNICEF and NGOs. So these are especially people in terms of food assistance and nutrition and they get onto a helicopter. They move into an area and in that particular instance, like what we're experiencing now, it is after negotiations with the various parties involved in the conflict to tell them that what people need is food, nutrition, health assistance and they need somewhere safe where they can come and receive that assistance.

MW: Okay. And I assume those negotiations aren't always successful. I mean what happens if you can't get to these people because of the fighting or because someone blocks you?

GEORGE FOMINYEN: It is a catastrophe that are caused when you don't get to people. That is what has led to where we are. It is a situation where people fled because there was fighting and they needed to find somewhere safe. And it's not fighting that continued the whole time. It is recurring fighting and breaks. Recurring fighting, then a break and then people have to keep being displaced multiple times. Then we can't reach them to provide regular assistance. Then they start falling. They start getting into a really difficult situation and into the catastrophic state which some of them find themselves now.

MW: Now this is a conflict that's been going on for some time now and it's a country that's been facing a lot of hunger. What keeps these people going?

GEORGE FOMINYEN: I tell you, it's amazing when you think about the resilience of the South Sudanese people, particularly the South Sudanese women. I've seen it over the course of this conflict and even before. In these places, like Unity State, but in other places around the country where people have been affected by the current conflict and of course the economic difficulties which the country is facing. You would not imagine the number of kilometres which some of these women would walk which children on their backs trying to go and get food. It's just amazing the resilience of these people. But we cannot continue to think that just because people are so resilient, that they've known conflict for so long that they should continue to feel so much suffering.

MW: So what can the international community do now to help the people of South Sudan?

GEORGE FOMINYEN: The international community has been doing a lot. We would have gotten into catastrophic situations far more earlier without the support of the international community and the hard work, the colossal work of humanitarian organizations in this country, which have been able to prevent us from getting into this kind of a catastrophe over the past three years. Because if you've been following the news on South Sudan, almost every year since 2014, there's been a story of it on the brink of a famine. It's on the brink of the famine. But then we manage to push it. Where we are having these pockets of famine-like conditions, it’s in places that we have not been able to reach. So if we can reach these places and we think that if we do and there's a joint effort, we will be able to move this back. What it requires from the international community is that they support this but also insist that peace is what is needed in South Sudan.

MW: Okay. George Fominyen, thank you very much.

GEORGE FOMINYEN: You're welcome.

MW: George Fominyen is a communications officer with the World Food Programme. We reached him in Juba, South Sudan. Simona Foltyn is a freelance journalist who's been covering the country and was recently in the north where people are also going hungry. She too is in Juba. Hello.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Hello. Thanks for having me.

MW: Simona, why is food insecurity is such a major problem in South Sudan right now?

SIMONA FOLTYN: Well, it has really been a problem for a really long time, essentially since the conflict began in 2013. We have right now 42 per cent of the population that is severely food insecure but really like the remaining 58 per cent are also struggling to even get one meal per day. And this is largely a manmade disaster. We've had intense fighting in many parts of the country for over three years and this means that essentially people have not been able to farm their fields. They have been displaced several times. They have lost everything they've had including their harvest, including their cooking utensils, their farming utensils and that has made basically made them entirely dependent on humanitarian aid.

MW: Now you were just in the northern part of the country. Can you tell me what you saw there?

SIMONA FOLTYN: Yes. I went to the northern part of the country which has been affected by recent fighting and this is one of the areas that has not been declared a famine but is also an area that is extremely food insecure. People were dependent on aid agencies even before this most recent wave of violence arrived and they were actually just starting to get back on their feet. They had just had a harvest so it looked like life was starting to get back to normal. And then fighting broke out again. They were forced to flee deep into the bush away from the river Nile, which is their source of livelihood but which is effectively the front line in this part of the country. And so they have been basically staying under the trees with no shelter, with no food and very little water. And one of the families I spoke to which is representative of many of the displaced there, they've had no choice but to pick leaves from the trees and eat those because at that time there was no aid.

MW: And we've heard that sometimes eating leaves or water lilies or that sort of thing causes other health problems. Are people dealing with that as well?

SIMONA FOLTYN: Already I can start seeing the effects of that. People are feeling sick. There was one woman who collapsed in front of me because she had severe stomach pain and she had to be taken away to a clinic and another woman I spoke to, she had actually given birth in a school because she had also run away from fighting without any medical assistance. And she too was feeding on leaves while breastfeeding her newly born. So it's an unimaginable situation.

MW: And how are people coping with the violence?

SIMONA FOLTYN: They are extremely fearful because this is not a very dense bush, which makes them still prone to for example airstrikes. So they have fled the front line. They have tried to get as far away from the fighting as possible but they know that at any point in time, they may be forced to run again for their lives.

MW: Now obviously delivering food aid to people in this condition is difficult. What kind of challenges are you facing in getting food to people?

SIMONA FOLTYN: There has been a lot of obstruction of aid being delivered. And especially so to opposition areas and there are several reasons for that. Part of it is just there is fighting going on. It's not safe. Part of it is that there are very loose chains of command where you may have the assurance from a high ranking commander in the capital Juba, but then the soldiers on the ground don't respect that order. So it's basically not safe for the humanitarians to go in. And then of course, there is also a certain effort by the armed groups to deprive a population that they perceive sympathetic to the other side from food aid. So all of these factors are playing in and of course it remains a huge risk for the aid workers, as well as for the people who are coming to get the food because it also makes them a target in a certain way. You imagine this is a conflict zone and you have tens of thousands of people coming to pick up a bag of sorghum and then they have to walk with that bag of sorghum and obviously in a country where soldiers aren't getting paid, where also soldiers struggle to get food, these civilians who have just been given aid become a target for these people as well. And actually I heard a few months ago that aid agencies had reduced the rations that they're giving out to enable people to basically to run faster so they can get away with the food to wherever they're hiding.

MW: Can you tell me about the fighting and violence? Who's fighting whom and why?

SIMONA FOLTYN: So the conflict has been going on for over three years and it has changed a little bit in the past year and a half or so. In the beginning we had forces loyal to President Salva Kiir fighting those loyal to rebel leader Riek Machar. So it was pretty much kind of a two-sided conflict where you have two sides and it's clear who is who and they're fighting each other. Now in the past year and a half or so, we've seen an increased fragmentation of these armed groups. We've seen an increased use of militia and we've seen new groups pop up that don't really have an alliance with either one of those. And of course, all of these things have a very complicated access to the population to deliver aid. Now what we've also seen since July last year especially when basically we had a situation where the opposition leader Riek Machar, he came back to Juba as part of a peace deal that was signed in August 2015 and then fighting erupted again. And this was a major setback, basically putting the entire peace agreement on hold and since then we have seen the government really consolidating its control over many parts of the country, running major military operations to try to defeat the rebels in the pockets where it still held controls.

MW: Right. I mean do you think there is a risk of genocide?

SIMONA FOLTYN: Well, there was a genocide warning that was issued in November last year by the United Nations and we have certainly seen a lot of targeting of civilians based on their ethnicity. There is absolutely no doubt about that. And this ethnic component in the conflict has certainly gotten much stronger. In the beginning it was more of a power struggle and much more political and again in the later part of the conflict, the ethnicity has become really the key driver for violence so we have seen a lot of that. We have seen a lot of communities being targeted based on their ethnicity. We have seen a lot of women raped. We have seen a lot of houses burned and it clearly seems to be one ethnic group against the other. But I just recently spoke to the head of the UN peacekeeping mission and he said that it is still not as systematic as for example we’d seen in the Rwanda genocide that you could say that there is a genocide taking place. But definitely the people are being targeted based on their ethnicity and killed in and pretty large numbers.

MW: Right. Simona Foltyn, thank you so much for talking with us.

SIMONA FOLTYN: Thank you.

MW: Simona Foltyn is a freelance journalist in Juba, South Sudan. For another perspective, we've reached Jok Madut Jok. He is the former culture ministry undersecretary for the South Sudan government. He now runs the Sudd Institute, a think tank in Juba and is a professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. We reached him in Juba. Hi there.

JOK MADUT JOK: Hello to you, ma'am.

MW: Can you take me back to July 2011 where after years of struggle, South Sudan finally became a nation? What were the dreams then?

JOK MADUT JOK: July 2011, independence of South Sudan was a culmination of a long struggle spanning decades. So that meant that every evil that the war had thrown at the people of South Sudan was now expected to be lifted once and for all. The insecurity, the famines, the violence, the torture, the abduction that had characterized that conflict with Sudan was now coming to an end and in was expected to come prosperity, peace, coexistence and a government of the people for the people. That was not to be, not at least in the speed that the people expected it to come.

MW: Can you tell me what derailed that dream?

JOK MADUT JOK: Several things. The above all was the long burdensome history that war had left on the shoulders and the psyche of the nation. And it came in the form of continued suffering because of the kind of ethnic violence left behind. The arms were widespread at the hands of civilians. This was also followed by failures of the new government, of the New Republic and this failure came in the form of corruption. It came in the form of bad governance and infighting within the ruling party which had been the liberation movement. So this infighting has allowed the leaders to get away with the failure to provide the services that so many people had hoped for. Granted that these expectations were much higher than the capacity of the country to deliver, there was no sign that there was an effort on the part of the political leaders to step in and deliver those services. I think that is what shattered that dream.

MW: How much of these sorts of problems that emerged were a hangover of the former conflict with Sudan?

JOK MADUT JOK: A lot of it had to do with the conflict of Sudan, most particularly in the sense that the war had destroyed property. It had wrecked ethnic relations. It had left behind a culture of violence and it had left behind a policy, a culture of impunity. In fact, a lot of South Sudanese think that the Southern Sudanese leaders at the time were a product of that system of Sudan, which they have inherited and are not able to change, to go towards an open society, a society where people are allowed to be entrepreneurial, be enterprising and innovative. Instead, the society the South Sudanese inherited was one where impunity writ large.

MW: And what about the population? How equipped were they to understand their role, their civic role in building this new nation?

JOK MADUT JOK: A lot of people understood that the expectations of government delivering services came with the responsibility that the citizen also needs to do his or her part. South Sudan had become a state. But South Sudan was not a nation state, in that the citizens were not invested in the idea of collective belonging to that new entity. Instead, most people were citizens in their ethnic groups and in order for them to graduate from that citizenship in the tribe or in the region, they needed a plan at the political level to be able to follow a program that would imbue the citizen with a sense of citizenship in the nation and not citizenship in the region or their tribe.

MW: Right. So in a sense you're saying that there wasn't a national identity yet or a plan to form a national identity.

JOK MADUT JOK: That is correct. There was no nation building project. Instead, the focus was on [unintelligible] building. Building the institutions. And this was the case with even the international donor community that had serious goodwill to help South Sudan become a stable prosperous country. But they focused on building the country's institutions and did not pay attention to the other side of the coin, which is to help people become citizens with particular value system, with a particular cultural outlook. In a sense, you had made South Sudan but you had not made South Sudanese.

MW: Fascinating. So here we are more than three years later. There's a civil war. There's a famine. Can you tell me what it's like in South Sudan today?

JOK MADUT JOK: Well today, there is this civil war that has been fought for so many years now. It sort of ended in a peace agreement that was signed in the summer of 2015 and it started to be implemented in the spring of 2016. But it was not long before it collapsed between the two primary contenders President Salva Kiir Mayardit and the former vice president Riek Machar, who fell out very soon after they created the transitional government of national unity. And Riek had to leave the country and he's still out there, which has left a situation of no war, no peace. And as a result, the country has not been able to focus on the welfare of the citizens and instead it has continued to spend meagre resources that are available on concluding that war and fighting that war. The conflict is mainly over political power and then it is over the natural resources, such as oil. Now there is also a kind of a natural aspects of the famine which is that in some areas where there is a fragile famine now, there was climate change has resulted in lack of rain, therefore a poor harvest this past year.

MW: Now the UN in December said there's also ethnic cleansing underway. Do you think South Sudan is heading into a genocide?

JOK MADUT JOK: Absolutely not. I think there is truth in targeted ethnic fights. But these have not been characterized by an all-out attempt to wipe out the opponent. South Sudanese have always fought among themselves across ethnic lines but these are wars that are often limited to competition over resources. These are diminishing resources. But it has not amounted to an all-out effort to wipe out another ethnic group. So genocide is certainly not the right word to describe what is going on at the moment.

MW: Okay. But obviously there were a lot of different factions fighting against each other. What do you think it will take to bring about peace?

JOK MADUT JOK: Well, I think the South Sudanese themselves have now come to a realization that there can never be any decisive military solution to this conflict. And that talking is going to be the only way out. But it will take also South Sudanese themselves to end this conflict.

MW: Looking back six years ago to the independence of South Sudan, does the dream that you and your fellow country people envision, does that seem like folly now?

JOK MADUT JOK: At the moment under the weight of the ongoing violence and the economic challenges, the country is basically broke and the challenges of isolation from the rest of the world, all of these things in the immediate sense give a lot of citizens the sense that the idea of South Sudan that they had in mind—a cohesive progressive nation—is challenged, to say the least. But I don't think it has reached the level where many people are giving up on the ideal of being citizens of South Sudan and that South Sudan is a country that is viable and it is likely to succeed in the future. There are challenges but these are not unsurmountable challenges.

MW: Okay. Thank you very much.

JOK MADUT JOK: Thank you. Good day, ma’am.

MW: Jok Madut Jok is the former culture ministry undersecretary for the South Sudanese government. He now runs the Suddd Institute, a think tank in Juba and is a professor of history at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. I spoke to him in Juba.

[Music: Bridge]

MW: That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Today, new music from east coast singer songwriter Jenn Grant. Her new album is called Paradise. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally, after our discussion on what's happening in South Sudan, let's end things on music today from a Sudanese-American musician. He goes by the name of Sinkane and his new record Life & Livin’ It was released last month. This is “Favorite Song”. I'm Megan Williams. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: “Favorite Song” - Sinkane]

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March 3, 2017 full episode transcript

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