What does Pope Francis say about Bernie Sanders?

Bernie Sanders visited Pope Francis at the Vatican Saturday to collect what seems to be an endorsement of his economic and social ideas.

|
Alessandra Tarantino/AP
US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, backdropped by the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, leaves after an interview with the Associated Press, at the Vatican Saturday. He said he met with Pope Francis Saturday morning before the pope left for his one-day visit to Greece.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders interrupted his presidential campaign part-way through the primaries with a Roman holiday and answered an invite from Pope Francis. 

The Vatican might seem an odd campaign stop for a nominally Jewish presidential candidate, but it has earned Vermont's Sen. Sanders the closest thing to a papal endorsement that a US politician can receive.  

Although the Vatican has emphasized the pope's neutrality in the American election, the popular and media-savvy pope is at least expressing support for Sanders' signature positions.

"The optics are of a tacit papal endorsement of Sanders' views on social and economic justice," says R. Andrew Chesnut, the chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. "This, combined with Francis's recent rebuke of Donald Trump, leaves no question about whom the Latin American pope prefers in the American presidential contest."

Sanders spoke Friday for 15 minutes at a Vatican conference on the dangers of an "unregulated globalization" that concentrates wealth among a few to the detriment of the middle class, CNN reported. Adding to the visit's significance, Pope Francis defied expectations by meeting privately with Sanders in what the senator called an "extraordinary moment." 

"Participation at the Vatican conference provides a global platform for Sanders to both increase his appeal to American Catholics and position himself alongside the Argentine pontiff as a global spokesman on matters of social justice," Dr. Chesnut says. "It's been patently clear for some time now that Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis are fellow travelers."  

What makes an Argentine pope and a Jewish senator effective "fellow travelers?"

Sanders' pro-abortion views and support for same-sex marriage hardly complement those of Pope Francis, who reasserted both the church's commitment to traditional families and opposition to abortion just last week. Given that Sanders interrupted his campaign to visit Rome, and the pontiff made time before an early trip to Greece to greet him, however, the two appear willing to overlook family matters.

"It goes without saying that I have my strong disagreements with certain aspects what the church stands for but [Pope Francis] has been out there talking about the need for a moral economy," Sanders said at a campaign rally in New York City, where supporters cheering his announcement of the Vatican visit apparently thought the jaunt to Rome was a good use of campaign time, CNN reported.

Pope Francis' clear focus since his papacy began has been for the poor, and many of his more overtly theological reforms aim to relieve struggling families. Sanders' speech on "the morality of our economic life" found "resonance" at the Vatican, Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, who was present for Sanders' papal meeting, told CNN. 

Climate policy is another area the two can agree upon, as Sanders is this US presidential race's most outspoken climate-change crusader. Pope Francis outlined his concerns about climate change in an encyclical and urged the United States to play a role in altering mankind's impact on the environment.

The pope has also taken a strong position against the death penalty and advocated mercy inside the prison system, Chesnut wrote for the Huffington Post. There, too, Sanders has historically promoted alternative rehabilitation measures and opposed capital punishment.

Apart from these specific views, the pope has not been averse to endorsing American socialists. When he visited the United States in September, Pope Francis structured his speech to Congress around the examples of four Americans who built "a better future" and "offer us a way of seeing and interpreting reality," The Christian Science Monitor reported. One of these was Dorothy Day, a Catholic journalist and 20th-century socialist.

The pope has also been asked on numerous occasions whether he, like Sanders, is a socialist. He has directly rejected Marxism, however, and said his concern for the poor is a Christian tenet that communists have "stolen," Catholic News Agency wrote.

"I must say that communists have stolen our flag," he told the Roman daily Il Messagero in 2015. "The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is the center of the Gospel. The poor are at the center of the Gospel.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to What does Pope Francis say about Bernie Sanders?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0416/What-does-Pope-Francis-say-about-Bernie-Sanders
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe