Thom Nickels: Hollywood mourns a pope they never really understood

When Pope Francis was alive he fired off comments while traveling in the papal plane from Asia to Rome. Air travel, apparently, inspired Francis to unleash confusing and ambiguous statements that had many Catholics and others scratching their heads.  

At 10,000 feet he weighed in on Americans’ upcoming choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. He categorized both candidates as “against life” and urged Catholic voters to choose the “lesser of two evils.” 

“One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” Francis told reporters. 

“To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them … it’s something terrible, there is evil there,” he elaborated. “To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly.”

The pro-open borders pope criticized President Trump in 2016 when he promised to build a wall at the southwestern border: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.”

Although Francis equated abortion with murder, in his evaluation of Trump and Harris he put murder on an equal footing with the deportation of illegal aliens. 

Francis called immigration controls “cruel,” but ironically he was ignorant of the horrors of open border migration that — by necessity — includes dangerous journeys across the southwestern desert terrain.  People and children die during these long treks, many are robbed and women are raped, some even sold into prostitution. All this happens because migrants know the border is open so they embark on the journey and take their chances.

This analogy has often been cited: the huge wall around the Vatican. For anyone who has walked through the city of Rome and then happened upon the Vatican wall, the immediate feeling is one of sky-high immensity. This large and garish albatross is much like encountering an overdone medieval fortress. Architecturally, it’s really an assault on the senses and speaks to the isolation and protection of a privileged class.

If walls are not of the gospel, why hasn’t this wall been removed, why didn’t the Vatican under Francis’ reign allow immigrants occupy the many residential properties they own in Rome and elsewhere in the world? 

Why didn’t Francis share his apartment with knapsack-laden drug cartel fentanyl-carrying thugs?  

As an Argentine friend of mine recently remarked, “Why wasn’t the Vatican nunciature in Buenos Aires — a splendid mansion in the most expensive part of town — used for refugees from Venezuela who have settled in Argentina by the thousands?”

Francis, when he was alive, exasperated the goodwill of many Catholics. 

In telling American Catholics to choose “the lesser of two evils” when it came to the 2024 election, the pope was virtue signaling the globalist agenda by falsely elevating immigration — and everything that implies — to the level of a serious sin (abortion) to make a political point.    

In many of his statements and references when he was alive, Francis indicated that all religions are more or less equal. He reiterated this belief in Singapore when he told a gathering of different faith leaders these different paths might be compared to “different languages in order to arrive at God.”

“But God is God for all. And if God is God for all, we are all sons and daughters of God,” he said. Of course, in an existential sense, this is true but why then does Francis contradict Scripture when he condemned those who say, “But my God is more important than your God!  

“There is only one God,” he concluded, “and each of us has a language, so to speak, in order to arrive at God, Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian. There are different paths. Understand?”

If this is true, what was the point of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and gave them the gift of tongues (languages) so they could go to the far corners of the known world and evangelize the gospel?  

Why preach to pagans or idol-worshipers if all religions lead to God? What would be the point? If all religions lead to God, leave the idol-worshipers alone and let them seek God in their own way. Why trouble them? Why upset the balance? Why say, “My God is more important than your God?” Because, really, that’s what evangelizers are doing; they are saying “We have a better way.” 

More importantly, what about Jesus’ directive, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me?” (John 14:6, ESV)

Is what Jesus said just hubris? As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Either this claim is true or Jesus is a lunatic or a liar.”

Pope Francis has died and now I am left wondering: How did pop culture become so invested in the death of a pope and who might be named as his successor? 

In the past, popes came and went. Pope Pius XII died when I was a child and there were no celebrity interviews about his relevance. It is doubtful whether the Hollywood stars active at that time knew or cared about the Roman Catholic reigns of power. 

Imagine Jayne Mansfield, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Hayward or Marlon Brando critiquing Pius XII’s papacy the same way Joy Behar and the cast of “The View” deified Pope Francis, praising his welcoming of migrants and encouraging countries the world over to accept anyone who wished to enter their country. 

The transformation of the papacy from the ultimate moral authority in Roman Catholicism into a “power source” aligned with the globalist elite, is the doing of Pope Francis. Francis has transformed the papacy to such a degree that non-Catholics, atheists, Islamists, pro-abortion feminists and callow celebrities now feel they can chime in and give their opinion on who they think his successor should be. 

Joy Behar, for instance, who identifies as agnostic and who is generally clueless about Christianity, said she hopes the next pontiff isn’t an anti-gay conservative who will undo all of Francis’s progressive reforms. 

Pundits who know next to nothing about Catholicism talk about liberal and conservative (papal candidate) cardinals as if they were weighing in on political primary candidates. 

Since Francis’s death, we have been subject to air headed stars waxing about how the next pope should be pro-LGBT, how he should allow married priests, women deacons and priests, multiple divorces, remarriage, and abortion. The next pope, they say, should continue the progressive revolution started by Francis. The Roman Church should be more like the Episcopal Church: women bishops unafraid to take on U.S. presidents; lesbian bishops who talk about equality, equity and diversity. 

Indeed, Francis’ greatest fans — the people who bemoaned his death with the highest emotion — tended to be non-Catholics and anti-Catholics, people who disliked the traditional Roman Catholic Church because it stood in such stark contrast to the values of the modern world. 

But anytime you have someone like Patti Smith composing eulogy-poems to Pope Francis, you know the pope in question is more a Bishop of Contemporary Mores than one concerned with issues of personal salvation. 

Smith posted her mini-poem on Instagram and posted it alongside the photo of a dandelion:

“This is a little flower a dandelion humble yet strong. I saw it this morning and was moved. Farewell dear Pope Francis. Nature and poetry and the suffering shall miss their champion.”

“Champion” in this case means an advocate for the criminal migrants who have invaded Europe and the southern border of the United States. (One of Patti Smith’s most famous eulogy-poems was videotaped years ago at the Moroccan tomb of French novelist Jean Genet, author of the blasphemous novel, “Our Lady of the Flowers.”) 

Who can forget how delighted the media was when, in the beginning of Francis’s papacy, it was reported that he had supported the liberation theology movement in South America. As his pontificate advanced, it became abundantly clear the Church that used to be at odds with society, the Church that held the line on so many moral issues, was slowly being “relaxed” into a lighter version of itself.  

Lukewarm Catholics fell in love with him, including many priests. 

These people hated the Latin Mass, thought the Rosary was old hat, believed Fatima to be a fake (a Francis-style Catholic priest told me years ago that he knew Fatima was a hoax because the Virgin Mary, in his opinion, would never show little children visions of people being tormented in hell). 

Generally, these Joe Biden Catholics support abortion and a woman’s right to choose; they shrug their shoulders at gender ideology and trans issues; they promote every woke narrative promulgated by Democrats. Even heretofore good Catholic institutions like Philadelphia’s American Catholic Historical Society began hosting lectures during Francis’ papacy with woke themes having to do with Black Lives Matter.

The “Francis effect” has split the Church in two. In St. Peter’s Basilica, where communion in hand and the wearing of shorts was always forbidden, under Francis’s reign it was given a green light. Men and women in shorts and flip-flops now easily stroll through the basilica, while communion in hand is now distributed as irreverently as it is in any average big city parish.    

True saints, I imagine, are not really celebrated and “venerated” by the world. When the world declares a pope or any religious leader a hero or a holy man of God, my first impulse is to take out what Ernest Hemingway called a “shit detector.” This is especially true when celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg — whose only connection to Catholicism was her 1992 role as a nun in the musical crime comedy, Sister Act — praise Pope Francis as a hero, and when headlines like “Tributes [to Pope Francis] are flooding in from Hollywood stars and other celebrities” pass as breaking news. 

These are the same stars, after all, who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome and are against the deportation of criminal migrants. 

Add to this the Francis tributes from lefty media ideologues like Rachel Maddow. Maddow who mourned Francis’ passing — “He changed the world, he changed the Church” — while simultaneously praising the time in 2015 when he addressed Congress and stated that the United States should never stop welcoming migrants, no matter the cost.

Maddow, a Joe Biden Catholic, recalled how Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, near the area where she says so many migrants “suffered.” Maddow invoked what GMA said about Francis’ passing: “He re-imagined the Catholic Church.” 

Re-imagine as in shaping it into a purely social justice Church without doctrine, a Church without rules, a progressive Church where transgender prostitutes can be blessed before going out on the town; a welcoming Church where no one is judged; a Church that Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg can praise. 

A host of other stars, of course, joined in the Francis-is-a-saint chorus: Martin Scorsese, Russell Crowe, Jimmy Fallon, and Antonio Banderas. Yes, Francis’s death was truly a Hollywood red carpet event. 

The Guardian printed these comments from actress Eva Longoria: “Rest in Peace, Your Holiness Pope Francis. Thank you for being an ally to many of us and speaking up for the marginalized. Your compassion, kindness and humility will always be remembered.” 

Further proof, as if we needed any, that the Church Francis left us with is no longer about the conversion of the world, but its total inclusion. 

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.