Holy Smoke

Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported:  While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine in Iran by destroying ancient irrigation systems and catapulted diseased corpses into towns they besieged, a technique which reportedly introduced the Black Death into Europe.Why were the media suddenly writing about blood-crazed 13th-century warriors? Because, incredibly, Pope Francis – on a strange visit to Mongolia's minuscule Catholic community – had just been rhapsodising about the enlightened tolerance of Khan's Empire, without mentioning that its conquests came at the price of 40 million lives. Judged as a proportion of the global population at the time, that's the biggest slaughter in human history.  This came just days after Francis, talking to yo