Beginning in Reagan's time, the bitterly anti-communist and anti-Soviet, Polish John Paul II's time, Republicans have made a big, big deal out of the Papacy.
Reagan created the American embassy to the Vatican in 1984, the better to cement the alliance of American conservatives with Catholicism at home and US policy with the Polish Pope's in Europe.
But the Papacy is now in the hands of a well-informed fan of Liberation Theology, a man who may well think of Obama as too right-wing not on social issues, about which he seems not particularly radical, but on economic ones and on the deft use of the climate issue as a lever for forcing upon the richer nations really costly economic moves for the advantage of poorer ones.
The Pope vs. the GOP
House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, both Catholics, extended the speaking invitation to Francis, who will become the first pontiff ever to address a joint session of Congress.
A move of unbelievable stupidity for the Republicans.
And a wholly inappropriate move for a secular republic, as was Reagan's creation of the US Embassy to the Vatican.
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