Read what Pope Francis has to say about the strategies the devil uses against persecuted Christians. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe devil has two styles when he persecutes Christians<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span> First, he tries to seduce with worldliness by making them change the plan of redemption. This is the spirit of the world, expressed on the lips of the Mother of the sons of Zebedee. Vanity, worldliness, careerism, success: these are the ways the devil proposes to distance us from the cross of Christ.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen that doesn\u2019t work, he tries to destroy. The devil\u2019s pride is so great that he tries to destroy and enjoys destroying through maliciousness<\/span><\/span>. When he persecutes Christians, he acts with brutality. They are not killed<\/span><\/span>,<\/span><\/span> immediately, they are made to suffer. <\/span><\/span>This is also what Jesus experienced. The two thieves crucified with Jesus were not tormented like He was. They were left in peace to die. No one insulted them<\/span><\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read what Pope Francis has to say about the strategies the devil uses against persecuted Christians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-ryan-black","has-more-link","post-3071","format-standard","category-the-catholic-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p85OtW-Nx","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3072,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions\/3072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stthomasneilston.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}