After spending a lot of time complaining that Pope Francis wasn’t hated by non-right-wingers upon his death, the Media Research Center started fretting about his potential replacement. A May 3 post by Alex Christy claimed that a CBS correspondent “lamented Africans are not reflected in the Vatican’s halls of power despite Catholicism growing in the area. On the other, Patta warned that an African pope would not be the pro-LGBTQ reformer liberals would want him to be,” while a May 7 post by Nicholas Fondacaro whined that another show had “an entire segment dedicated to calling for a pope more “progressive” than Pope Francis. They went so far to call for priests to be allowed to act on lustful temptations.” The following day, Christy huffed that comedian Lewis Black tried to “tie the 133 cardinals currently voting in the papal conclave to the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals.”
After a new pope had been chosen, Christy grumbled in another May 8 post that his right-wing credentials were being ignored:
After Cardinal Robert Prevost became the first American ever to be elected Pope on Tuesday and took the name Leo XIV, MSNBC’s Katy Tur picked and chose what aspects of his beliefs to amplify and which ones to downplay or ignore. Naturally, for MSNBC, she highlighted his “rebuking” of conservatives and Republicans, but not of liberals and Democrats.
Tur asked former Time managing editor and Obama Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel, “Do you foresee this having some legs in the American political landscape?”
Stengel was hopeful that it would, “Yeah. You summarized it well. I mean, it may indeed be a rebuke of some of those conservative ideas. I don’t know that the cardinals are thinking about American politics as much as we are, but he’s a different kind of American.”
He contrasted Leo with Trump, “He’s a different kind of American. He represents values that are different than the values on the world stage of the MAGA Trump administration. Concern for the poor, concern for immigrants, all of the things that Francis talked about. I think it’s a boon to the idea that Americans don’t have to be this kind of autocratic model that we’re seeing with the Trump Administration.”
Leo also claimed that Kamala Harris’s support for abortion meant the 2024 election was about the need to “choose the lesser evil.” He has also claimed that protecting society’s most vulnerable means “ensuring their dignity is upheld from the womb to the end of life” and “Bishops are called to be shepherds who defend the sanctity of life, ensuring no one — neither the unborn nor the aging — is left without the Church’s love and protection.”
Christy didn’t mention that the “evil” tied to trump was his opposition to immigration.
Fondacaro whined that a “liberal Catholic writer” had “lashed out at conservatives and told them to search their souls and change their politics.” Christy, meanwhile, complained that late-night hosts pointed out that the new pope has been critical of the current administration:
The Thursday editions of the late night comedy shows truly proved that they are simply MSNBC with more jokes. Like that network, they appreciated that the first American pope, the newly elected Leo XIV, has criticized President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on immigration. The fact that he would rebuke their views on abortion, gender, and sexuality were inconvenient things to be ignored for the sake of politics.
CBS’s host of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, is the one late night host who frequently likes to say things like “as a Catholic.” He was invited to the Vatican by Pope Francis, along with several other comedians, to discuss the trade, but he still puts his liberal beliefs first. On Thursday, Colbert downplayed Leo’s conservative traits in order to hype his opinions about Vance, “Of course, there’s lots of speculation on whether Leo will continue the progressive reforms of his friend, Pope Francis. No one knows for sure yet, but we do know that in February, he did tweet, ‘JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’ Holy Father, you had me at ‘JD Vance is wrong.’”
Over on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel thought there was something odd about Trump declaring he was looking forward to meeting Leo despite the latter’s previous criticism of him, “He did say he looks forward to meeting the new Chicago pope. Wait till he finds out how many times this new pope has criticized him.”
[…]The comedy shows really are just like the rest of the media. They will use the pope to amplify their criticisms of Republicans but either ignore, downplay, or condemn his rebukes of Democrats.
Apparently, Christy doesn’t believe that Fox News and other right-wing media are “media.”
Rich Noyes grumbled that “liberal journalists took special delight in evidence that the new Pope — just like his predecessor — seems to disagree with the Trump administration on issues like immigration.” However he cited only one actual journalist, with the other person being MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. Christy insisted that an MSNBC commentator tried “in hilarious fashion” to avoid that the new pope follows Catholic teaching on certain subjects. Noyes returned to grouse that the new pope “has at least some at [CNN] hoping that Leo XIV will be able to get through to Trump in ways that others could not because— wait for it! — he speaks English.”
Fondacaro grumbled during his daily hate-watch of “The View”:
While the rest of the liberal media were trying to convince the American public that Pope Leo XIV was one of theirs, the purported Catholics of ABC’s The View were fearful that he would abide by church doctrine. They were upset by the idea that he would continue the church’s understanding that marriage was between a man and woman, while an anti-Catholic voice tried to smear him with accusations she admitted were unsupported.
Fondacaro was given control of the May 9 MRC podcast in Tim Graham’s stead, and he rehashed all of this:
Even before the College of Cardinals acted out the Holy Spirit’s intent in elevating Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost to pope, outlets like CBS were wish casting hopes for an extreme abdication of the Catholic Church’s teachings. CBS’s Tony Dokoupil wondered if a new pope would work to boost priest vocational numbers by allowing priests to lust.
We dove into the immediate reaction to the announcement, when the liberal media rushed to gaslight the world about Leo being a liberal like them. Of course, the ignored his apparent voting record in GOP primaries.
Fondacaro made sure not to let an viewpoint that opposed MRC dogma to interfere with his narrative.