"Pope Francis Links"
July 27, 2015
Pope Francis’ election in 2013 to lead the Catholic Church stirred hope among American Catholics that his humble style, reformist plans and new world roots might revive the church’s fortunes in the US.
But more than two years later, Americans — and especially conservatives — appear to have cooled on the 78-year-old Argentine pontiff ahead of a highly-anticipated September visit.
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A new Gallup poll showed that Pope Francis’ favourability rating among Americans has dropped to 59 per cent, from 76 per cent in February 2014. This is below the levels recorded by Pope John Paul II throughout most of his papacy – although it is still broadly better than his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
The apparent disenchantment follows an escalation in recent months in the Pope’s rhetoric against global capitalism.
On a trip to Latin America this month, he called unfettered free markets the “dung of the devil” and a “subtle dictatorship”, and in last month’s encyclical — the highest form of papal teaching — excoriated big business for plundering nature.
The Pope’s call to action on climate change has also proven awkward for Republican politicians who still question the science behind global warming.
“There is no doubt that the US is a particularly tough audience for this Pope’s message,” said John Allen, associate editor of Crux, a Boston-based Catholic website. “In some ways there is a perception that this just isn’t our Pope . . . It’s not just the anti-capitalist stuff — it’s also his drive to lift up the periphery rather than the centre, and by most standards we are the centre.”
One recent image — of the Pope receiving a hammer-and-sickle crucifix as a gift from left-wing populist Bolivian president Evo Morales this month — may have been particularly jarring to the many Americans who are instinctively wary of, if not repulsed by, socialism.
“With the Polish John Paul II and the German Benedict XVI, conservatives knew that the Vatican was utterly opposed to communism,” says Catherine Pepinster, editor of The Tablet, the international Catholic weekly based in the UK. “But they aren’t so sure about Francis; they worry that his Latin American roots make him a liberation theologian, a covert lefty.”
The Pope is Catholic, he’s not of the right and he’s not of theleft
- Senior Vatican official
Mary Gauthier, senior researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, questioned the poll’s significance. “It’s probably statistically significant but it’s not a major shift in any sense,” she said. “I think you’re going to see the numbers shoot back up in September when he [the Pope] comes . . . because everybody will be excited.”
The Catholic Church has been trying to reverse the long-term decline in its US flock. Between 2007 and 2014, it fell by 3m to about 51m — or 20.8 per cent of the population — according to the Pew Research Center.
The fate of Catholicism in America is not just important because of the sheer numbers of faithful, which are comparable to the number of Catholics in Italy, but because US Catholics are a big source of funding for the Church’s charitable activities and organisations around the world.
While most of the disappointment seems to be flaring among US conservatives — where Pope Francis’ favourability has plummeted from 72 per cent to 45 per cent — liberals are also less enthusiastic. Support for the pontiff from left-leaning Americans has dropped from 82 per cent to 68 per cent in the Gallup poll, released last week, possibly because he has not moved quickly enough to ease the Church’s rigid attitude on homosexuality, divorce, and female priesthood.
Vatican officials dismiss the polls and say the Pope is looking forward to the September visit — the first known trip to the US of his life — which will take him to Washington, New York and Philadelphia.
“This isn’t the White House and it isn’t the Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush campaign — we don’t sit around and say things are going down, we need a tax cut for the middle class,” said one senior Vatican official. “The Pope is Catholic, he’s not of the right and he’s not of the left. For every point you can score on the right, you can score one on the left, and if he bothers your conscience it just means he’s doing his job,” the official said.
Nevertheless, the Vatican official also signalled that the Pope — who has been brushing up on his English and preparing for the US trip during the hot Roman summer — might fine-tune his language, ever so slightly, to make it more appealing to Americans. “There’s no doubt he will challenge Americans, he’s not going there to play nice,” he said. “But it’s not the same as going to Bolivia — you couldn’t go with precisely the same message,” he added.
Mr Allen of Crux believes that once Pope Francis arrives on US soil, much of the debate about his falling popularity will ease amid the large crowds and positive media coverage, so the American visit will still end up being a significant success.
“I don’t think this is going to torpedo his trip in any fundamental way, the question is more long term,” says Mr Allen. “Is there a segment of the American population who has basically decided to tune out this Pope [because] they think they know what he’s about, and they don’t really like it?”
Additional reporting by Anna Nicolaou in New York
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