Maybe, maybe not. Several problems with that evidence, at least for the point you are making:
The Catholic mind is not horrified by nudity per se: we see it in our museums all the time. That is what my discourse on religious art meant to illustrate. The issue is piety, but we need to know if in African culture a bare breast is impious. So far as I know it is not. The woman does not appear to be flashing the pope or taunting him; she seems to be addressing the audience. She is dressed, for all we know, in her Sunday best.
The table in front of the praesidium is not the altar. It is just that, a table. It looks like a portable table. When the Mass is served there would be no one sitting down. We cannot be sure if it is the sanctuary or some satellite facility for social events. I don't see the sacred vessels or a crucifix.
We don't know what the reaction to that event was.
I understand how you might be horrified by it. There are other examples of a pope, especially JPII, in compromising suituations like that: sitting in a synagogue, praying in a mosque, kissing the Koran etc. I'd much rather they did not do any of that multicultural stuff. But it does not strike me as a height of scandal. I am more with you when the Catholic Liturgy is compromised. This, I can live with.
What are your thoughts on Colonel Drozdov, a.k.a. Patriarch Alexey II, snitching on his flock to the KGB, by the way?
“What are your thoughts on Colonel Drozdov, a.k.a. Patriarch Alexey II, snitching on his flock to the KGB, by the way?”
Alex...what do you think a Greek would say about a KBG hierarch? Do you think he would be surprised at much of anything a hierarch does or did? :)
Coming from Estonians who welcomed Hitler? Not much.
“What are your thoughts on Colonel Drozdov, a.k.a. Patriarch Alexey II, snitching on his flock to the KGB, by the way?”
You know, it is disrespectful to criticize a Patriarch of the Orthodox Church based on rumors. Even more so, considering he has “fallen asleep”... His Holiness, Alexy II preserved and did much to restore the Church in Russia.
