Bulwark Takes - Pope Francis Was Everything MAGA Isn’t

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Tim Miller checks in with Joe Perticone live from Rome on the day Pope Francis passed away. Joe shares what it was like at the Vatican as the news spread, and they unpack the Pope’s legacy, his politics, and how MAGA world is already reacting.

Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here. Pope Francis died this morning on Easter Monday, born Jorge Bergoglio. He was the first Jesuit pope. Shout out to the Jesuits. First Latin American pope. And we are lucky to have our congressional correspondent, Joe Perticone, in Rome for a wedding. Weddings and funerals. You know, there's always a connection how you doing joe i'm very sad uh but very happy because it's my wedding but then the the sadness of learning about the death of pope francis someone who i admire greatly um was a big shock you know and i found out when i was five minutes walking distance from the vatic And so I was just like, let's walk over. And we sort of knew beforehand because we're sickos who check our phones all the time. But most of the people there didn't appear to know.

It was like not a lot of crowds because it was early in the morning and then i started watching people and nuns priests you know tourists um you know jews muslims there's tons of people there just as and you start seeing people look at their phones and then you see people gasp and then you start seeing people like tearing up a bit and then suddenly I turn around and what was five people behind me was hundreds thousands you know a sea of people just all walking over um to pay their respects to wait to see what happens um so it was like kind of a shocking moment, but it was very powerful. Yeah. Talk a little bit more about the mood. I mean, reverential, you sent a picture to our Slack of a couple of folks doing the rosary, a very familiar picture to a Catholic schoolboy

like me. But Catholics also, you know, funerals are a mixed emotion with Catholics, right? I mean, you're going home to God. It's a little bit less of, it's less dour maybe than in some funerals I've been to and some other faiths. What was the mood like in the square? Because we were there, like right when it happened, there was just a lot of shock because he had been sick for a long time, but then he had really looked like he turned the corner. And this past week was Holy Week. So he was doing public events. He did Stations of the Cross. We snubbed J.D. Vance and then met with him very briefly last night.

And so there was, you know, he drove in the Popemobile through St. Peter's Square just yesterday. So he was doing a lot more events. So people thought he had turned the corner. So it was not surprising, but I think the abruptness, and especially the morning after Easter. And so here in Italy, Monday after Easter is Pasqueda, which is another national holiday. So there's not a lot going on. A lot of stores are closed. So it was just very, very sudden. People expected, you know, if he was going to die,

it was going to be in the same kind of dramatic fashion that the several months prior to him getting better were. They would be more expected. Well, since you mentioned it, we have to at least do the brief on the rank politics of our vice president, J.D. Vance, having briefly met with him yesterday. If you have any elderly in your life, probably keep them away from J.D. Vance.

J.D. tweeted this morning about how he got to meet the Pope yesterday, the day before his death. I don't know if there's anything more to say about that. Do you have anything else on the J.D. of the situation? Here's a quote so vance was i guess wanting to meet with the pope like any catholic would and jd vance converted to catholicism just a handful of years ago and then the vatican just said no you're going to meet with the secretary of state of the vatican that's it and well francis then did his good friday stations of the Vatican. That's it. And well, Francis then did his Good Friday Stations of the Cross, in which he gave a long series of remarks. One of these stuck out to me, which you can read in Morning Shots, was a very obvious critique of the West and of the United States. Right now,

he said, today's builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of hell. And that really was another example of how Pope Francis was very critical of right-wing governments, of overly aggressive, discompassionate capitalist governments and for him to be talking that way to the very end and then to give vance a very brief meeting this was just like an exchange of plaza trees he had a couple easter eggs for vance's kids he gave jd a pie or something and was just like great and the photos the vatican release he's sitting there like and vance is you know giddy as anyone and any catholic would be meeting the pope um but vance's politics and differ greatly and pope francis is a huge huge advocate for migrants which this administration is um

an active dater to all migrants. And so the politics are there and they're going to be throughout the, especially throughout the selection process for the new Pope, because Pope Francis, people think, oh, there are so many conservatives in the American Catholic Church that they don't want another,

you know, progressive like Pope Francis. I don't think that's true. He's really remade the College of cardinals in a way that very much mimics his idea that you place priority on the poor and on migrants and so you might see a continuation of his style of leadership if you look at the preferiti which is you know the guys who they expect to be in the running you know the final four to be the next popes um you know a lot of them are very similar to uh to pope francis ideologically and so if

their personality is similar to his which is very unafraid of very powerful people outside the church um you know you can expect that to continue and you can expect the divide between you know these very new catholics like vance who uh practice things that aren't aren't aren't catholic at all really um don't really align with jesus's teachings and so the politics are still going to be there and you're going to hear from a lot of them as this process goes forward. Yeah, I'll put a link in the notes here. There's a very long,

the Pillar is just a very good Catholic media outlet that had a very long obit that I read this morning of Francis. And he really does position it as like, Francis was not like the radical left pope that like the you know that the MAGA post MAGA bishops in America like tried to make him out to be like a very politicized American church right and we see this in a lot of um you know kind of um different areas I the Denver where my family is my brother works at the Jesuit school you know the bishop

there archbishop is you know extremely far-right doctrinaire pro-Trump bishop it's kind of like what is that it's it's a rather new thing this influx in in the American Catholic Church but like that is not really how Francis is seen obviously he's not seen as a far right. And he didn't identify as that. And obviously, he focused more on the poor. Like his changes around, you know, giving a blessing to same-sex couples or whatever are like a lot more. Were a lot more mild than what a lot of folks wanted to paint him out to be. And it was more about, you know, kind of his focus on the poor and his image. And he became, he came into, you recognition as uh as archbishop in in argentina um like doing the you know going to

the slums right like washing the feet of aids uh patients and you know doing the types of lowering himself that is so counter to kind of this whatever faux masculine, faux tough guy, you know, sort of element that we're seeing on the right. To that point, there is one other political kind of element here. Tom Homan, the immigration czar for Trump, went after Pope Francis not just a few months ago, saying, I've got harsh words for the Pope. The Pope ought to fix the Catholic Church. And so you are going to see, I think, a very politicized treatment of this from this White House and from MAGA World. I don't know if you've anything else on that. Yeah. And you could have seen it on Thursday. Every Holy Thursday, Pope Francis visits a prison outside of Rome where he washes the feet of the inmates, which is a very symbolic gesture.

Yep. You were as good as dead. And so now it's more of a symbolic thing of washing the feet. And he goes into these prisons every year. And this year he said, every time I come here, I ask, you know, why them and not me? one who claims to be a practicing Catholic, like Riley Moore from West Virginia, doing the thumbs up pose at the world famous torture prison in El Salvador. And so there is that huge divide. I think when we look at the way that Pope Francis approached things, a lot of people liked to make him in their image. And so they would say things like, oh, he's this radical liberal or he's this huge progressive. That's sort of misreading the situation. When he would say, oh, I want to give blessings to LGBT people or I want women to be treated fairly, he wasn't saying, well, let's have some purple haired woke priest now. He wasn't doing that. He didn't change change there's no women in the priesthood now uh you know like there's like a lot of things that didn't change right and and most catholics aren't demanding that would right and he's just made it a

more inclusive for you know the worshiper which is the most important thing that's what affects the most people and that's what stuck out to. And the way that he's stared for the poor, he made this quote. So right around inauguration time, I read this quote from Pope Francis where he said, when you give money to the poor, don't just drop a coin in their cup and keep walking. Stop and make eye contact with them. That's the more important thing you can do than anything. And when I was walking to the January 6th inaugural ball, which I wrote a piece about, there's a homeless man outside. Everyone was ignoring him. And I stopped and I gave him, I think it was 10 bucks, and I looked him in the eye and I was like, he's a hundred percent right. That is much more meaningful. Um, and then

I went into the January 6th inaugural ball and that was another story. But what are you making eye contact in there? Yeah. Like that eye contact was a lot more uncomfortable. Um, but like, you know, having like even the smallest amount or changing, calibrating the way you I just was like that, that was the vibe. He said this was a very decent man in a very indecent period in history. Well, I mean, he named himself, the Francis comes after St. Francis of Sisi, who's kind of a hot Saint when we were growing up. But besides that known for, you know, care of animals mostly, but,

but really for society's outcasts. Right. And that's like how he tried to to frame himself um so do you get to hear the bells were the bells tolling at the saint peter's basilica um yeah they do their like standard bells uh at 11 a.m um but they were kind of going off and on uh throughout the morning um i'm gonna try and head back there later this evening. Um, when the camera lingo, which is essentially the Susie Wiles of the Vatican, uh, will lay him out a coffin and, and, and well, you know, a much nicer version of Susie Wiles, basically the chief of staff. Yeah. And I'm going to try and go there. That'll, I'm expecting a much bigger crowd even than i saw this morning because more people

will get word more people are going to come in from out of town um and and right now too is every 25 years in the catholic church it's called the jubilee and oh yeah it's like a it's a period uh where everyone floods to italy and so it's more packed in general with especially religious people all people on my flight you know half maybe two-thirds of them were just you know church groups making the 25-year pilgrimage um to italy you know there were huge groups and you could tell and so it's going to be really packed and this is going to make it even more packed. I did not realize it was the Jubilee. I remember the 2000 Jubilee as a Catholic schoolboy, vividly. Anyway, Joe Pridigan, well, give us more.

If you go there later tonight, give us a little video of the scene. We can post it on the page here and appreciate it. Congrats on the wedding, and thanks for doing a little work on your wedding week. Yep. All right, everybody else, subscribe to the feed. We got a man in Rome. The least you can do is subscribe to the feed. We'll be back here later today with more.

See you soon.