Pope Francis
Pope Francis

While Vladimir Putin refers to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation," Pope Francis calls it as he sees it.

“World War III has been declared,” the Pontiff told a meeting of editors of Jesuit magazines. “This is something that should give us pause for thought. What is happening to humanity that we have had three world wars in a century.”

Francis spoke of the war’s brutality and ferocity carried out by Russian troops and their Syrian and Chechen mercenaries.

He praised the bravery and heroism of the Ukrainian people. “What is before our eyes is a situation of world war, global interests, arms sales and geopolitical appropriation, which is martyring a heroic people.”

Francis said the war in Ukraine is different from other regional conflicts in Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar because it is “the direct intervention of a superpower aimed at imposing its own will in violation of the principle of the self-determination of peoples.”

Joseph Stalin purportedly asked, "How many divisions does the Pope have?”

Putin may actually ask that same question, but he will eventually be judged by a higher authority.

Lost in the noise generated by the recall of San Francisco’s “woke” DA Chesa Boudin was news that the city’s school board has dropped “chief” from job titles.

The leaders of the San Francisco Unified School District made the move after some Native Americans expressed concern over the use of the term.

Not again.

These are the same super politically correct clowns who voted to remove the names of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln from public schools only to flip-flop after getting heat over the attempted rebranding.

Will PR firms follow the lead of the SFUSD? Are they ready to get rid of CEO, CMO, CCO, COS, CTO and CIO titles?

The SFUSD missed the boat on the “cultural appropriation” angle.

John McWhorter, Columbia University linguistics professor and New York Times opinion writer, notes that “chief” is not an Indigenous word.

Rooted in Latin, “chief” then migrated to the French and English languages.

The “woke” SFUSD needs to take a nap.

What’s the fuss about crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pop-up LIV Golf circuit.

Barney Ronay, chief sports writer for the UK’s The Guardian, wrote: “Golf is not a sport with any deep sense of public ownership or social conscience. George Orwell called it 'an inherently snobbish game, which causes whole stretches of countryside to be turned into carefully guarded class preserves' and golf has never really done much to prove this is not the case."

He noted how uncomfortable Phil Mickelson was when asked if he really cared about the fate of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washingon Post contributor who was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad.

“Mickelson looked notably baffled and sweaty, projecting all the calm moral authority of an evangelical Republican presidential candidate squinting into the police cruiser headlights as he’s hauled out of a Las Vegas ditch in a rubber gimp vest,” wrote Ronay.

He believes golf is an elite sport that only exists to enrich those who control it.

“With their shrugs, their nihilism, their naked self-interest, the golfers of the LIV are at least being honest with us,” wrote Ronay.