When Pope Francis died last month, Newsmax commentator were fervently hoping his successor would be a right-winger. First up, right-winger Fred Fleitz:
Pope Francis was a very good man but we now “have to have a more conservative Pope who’s going to return the church to its solid, traditional values, because I think that’s where the American people are,” says Fred Fleitz, Vice Chair for the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security, to Newsmax.
“I’m a conservative Catholic, and I’m very sad about the passing of Pope Francis. He was a good man who cared deeply about the poor and the dispossessed and the isolated, but he also was a liberal globalist, and I had differences with him politically on his views towards global affairs,” Fleitz said Monday during an appearance on Newsmax’s “American Agenda.”
[…]Young people are returning to the church because “they’re looking for stability. They’re looking for traditional morals,” Fleitz told Newsmax.
“And Pope Francis really wasn’t pushing that. It wasn’t clear what he was pushing, whether he was trying to modernize the church, the people who wanted that weren’t getting it, those who want traditional values, they weren’t getting it either. But I agree, we have to have a more conservative pope who’s going to return the church to its solid, traditional values, because I think that’s where the American people are. I think that’s where the people of the world are.”
Newsmax also found a Catholic priest to voice the same hope:
Father Gerald Murray, pastor of Saint Joseph’s Church in New York City, said Monday on Newsmax that he expects the College of Cardinals to elect a more conservative Pope following the death of Pope Francis, describing the likely shift as a “return to normalcy.”
[…]When asked whether the next Pope would follow Francis’ more liberal approach or embrace a conservative tradition like that of Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI, Murray predicted a shift.
“I think it’s going to be a return. And I would say the word restoration or return to normalcy,” he said.
He noted several controversial aspects of Francis’ papacy.
“Pope Francis did so many good and normal things, but he did some abnormal things,” Murray said. “No Pope ever said that same-sex couples deserve a blessing as couples. No Pope ever said people divorced and remarried deserve to receive Communion.”
That was followed by a disgraced former priest:
Despite the late Pope Francis’ decision to elevate many of his supporters to the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals, Father Frank Pavone told Newsmax on Tuesday that he thinks the church will move in a different direction when it selects the next pontiff.
“I think that enough of these cardinals recognize the problems that have happened, that we will not get another Pope Francis,” Pavone said on “The Chris Salcedo Show.” “We won’t get another John Paul II, either. I believe that we’ll be somewhere in the middle. I believe that there will be a course correction. I think some of that is just human nature and the nature of the pendulum swinging politically in the church as it does in civic politics.
Writer Nicole Weatherholtz admitted that Pavone “was defrocked by Francis in 2022 for unspecified ‘blasphemous communications on social media” — which means he has lost the title of “Father” and she should not have referred to him that way.
Newsmax brought back Murray for an April 23 appearance that featured more whining that Francis was too liberal:
As the Vatican’s College of Cardinals gathers next week to select a new pope, Father Gerald Murray of St. Joseph’s Church in New York City told Newsmax that he expects it will pick someone with “a more traditional view of Catholic doctrine” than the late Pope Francis held.
“That’s going to be the big challenge for the College of Cardinals,” Murray said Wednesday on “Wake Up America.” “My estimation is that they’re going to return to a more John Paul II-, Benedict-style and substance of governance in the church. Pope Francis did many good things, but he also caused a lot of confusion, sad to say, by contradicting John Paul II and Benedict.”
“You mentioned blessing of gay couples, giving communion to divorced and remarried [people],” he continued. “Pope Francis also declared the death penalty immoral, something which Pope Benedict had never done, neither John Paul II. So those are going to be the subjects of discussion at the general meetings of the cardinals, which will begin next Monday after the funeral. We’re in that period now [where] we farewell and pray for the soul of one pope, and then we get ready for the next.”
In between, an April 22 commentary by José Arturo Quarracino huffed that Francis led “a totally disruptive papacy like no other in the history of the church”:
Francis promoted radical changes that were not simply evolutionary but one offering an abrupt break with the very life, doctrine and practice of the faith founded by Jesus Christ.
[…]Starting with his famous statement pronounced at the beginning of his pontificate: “Who am I to judge?” Francis’ successive defenses of the condition were a radical departure from teachings that emanate directly from sacred scriptures and the ecclesial magisterium.
[…]History may record that Francis was the first woke pope, easily and without complaint accepting the agendas of the United Nations (Agenda 2030), the World Economic Forum (The Great Reset), the Paris Summit (climate change), and Big Pharma’s take on COVID-19 — including many clearly anti-Christian concepts that remain totally alien to the ecclesial magisterium.
Quarracino did not explain how any of that is “woke’ or “anti-Christian.”