The Pope has criticized “cancel culture”, claiming it suffocates freedom of expression, rewrites the past and eliminates “all sense of identity”.

In a strongly worded speech Monday to diplomats gathered at the Vatican, the Pope said “a kind of one-track thinking is taking shape, one constrained to deny history or, worse yet, to rewrite it.”

The toppling of statues of historical figures associated with colonialism and slavery has been described as “cancel culture” by critics who argue that it ignores the historical context in which those people lived.