VATICAN CITY (RNS) In his annual address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See this month, Pope Francis “hit out at ‘cancel culture,’” as one headline put it. But the pontiff wasn’t complaining about how the twitterverse had banished Ellen DeGeneres or urged a boycott of Dr. Seuss.
Francis was indeed talking about “the social process of lynching someone,” according to Juan Pablo Cannata, a sociology researcher at Universidad Austral in Argentina, who is writing his dissertation on cancel culture. But the pope has his own definition of cancel culture, one in which local voices, especially those in poorer nations, are quashed by powerful institutions.
In international relations today, Francis told the diplomats at the Vatican on Jan. 10, the elite global community’s agenda ”leaves no room for freedom of expression and is now taking the form of the ‘cancel culture’ invading many circles and public institutions.”
What the pope’s vision shares with social media-driven boycotts against casual racism or misogyny, Cannata said, is that both are born from people “trying to build a more inclusive society, to promote values of tolerance, acceptance, for different identities and groups.” But in doing so the elites cancel, rather than converse with, cultures that don’t conform to their values.