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April 30, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
50:01
20250430_should-next-pope-make-the-vatican-great-again-feat
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Pope Francis vs MAGA 00:11:09
The Pope is very anti-MAGA.
He detested President Trump.
He detested the MAGA movement.
The death of Pope Francis leaves a void.
He basically stood as a living rebuke to this rising tide of right-wing populism that has infected the world.
This idea that Christianity is just this open, feel good, kumbaya thing.
It's completely liberation theology.
And that's why people like this guy love Pope Francis.
I said your definition.
You're opening up.
You've got a problem with liberation theology, but that's your problem.
Timeout for Francis is a Jesuit.
To call him a liberal would be to misunderstand his entire papacy.
Pope Francis burns in hell for his accommodation with evil.
Would you really mean that, Roger Stone?
The Pope's embrace of Marxism.
That is not the Catholic Church.
There's a huge schism between what the modern church is and what the traditional church stands for.
That's the fight you're going to see in the conclave and thereafter.
President Trump was among the world leaders paying a heartfelt tribute to the late Pope Francis at the Vatican this weekend.
In life, their relationship was not always straightforward.
Way back in 2016, the Pope questioned candidate Trump's faith, declaring that a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not a Christian.
Trump, of course, responded.
If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS's ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.
Well, a liberal reformist Pope and a firebrand conservative president were never likely to see eye to eye on everything, if anything at all.
Many commentators suggested the Pope looked glum when they first met in 2017, and Trump's own second coming did not build any bridges between the Vatican and Mar-a-Lago.
The Pope called mass deportation plans a disgrace and those voters to pick the lesser of two evils in the build-up to November's election.
Well, with the Pope's passing and the conclave now confirmed for May 7th to choose the next Pope, many traditionalists are calling for a reset in the Catholic Church and for a new papal leader who has much more in common with the U.S. president.
In a moment, we'll debate the politicalization of the pontiff with my panel, but we'll begin with a man who's had a significant influence on both the White House and the Vatican, the host of Warham, Steve Battner.
Steve, great to see you.
Piers, great to see you, sir.
So you, along with, I suspect Donald Trump had like to make the Vatican great again.
In all seriousness, I presume you would like to see a much more conservative Pope from what I've seen you say so far.
Explain what you would like the next Pope to represent.
I think conservatism is kind of a term that's that's fallen out, Piers, and it's really about their traditional, I would say, pre-Vatican II church versus the post-Vatican II, because John Paul II and Benedict did try to make sure, did try more, because they were both involved with Vatican II, that the Vatican II changes could be woven into the church.
And I think this new rise you see, particularly in America and parts of Europe, and particularly among young people, of traditional Catholicism, a return to Latin Mass or not Latin Mass, more of the traditional Catholic Orthodoxy, is really traditionalism.
And I think a lot of people, particularly the rising part of the church in America, would at least like to see a pope who is accessible to traditional teachings and gets the Catholic Church back on an Orthodox pattern.
There is a huge, kind of inside baseball, there's a huge fight with some of the more traditional cardinals with the Pope over a number of years and actually calling him a heretic.
They sent out letters to him called the Dubia, other things for him to respond to, and he kind of blew them off.
So there's a huge, almost like schism now in the church between what the modern church is and what the traditional church stands for.
And I think that's the fight you're going to see leading up to May 7th, even in the conclave and thereafter.
In a way, do you see this as a kind of religious version of what we've just seen go down in the U.S. election behind a kind of progressive left-wing agenda and the Trump MAGA agenda?
You know, I think you're seeing it worldwide.
If you remember when we were on Bill Maher the other day, they asked the question of you about this rise of Catholicism, a particularly conservative version of Catholicism in the United Kingdom.
And you're seeing that in Europe.
You're seeing it in the United Kingdom.
You're seeing the United States.
And it's interesting, Piers, it's coming from young men, not so much young women.
And there is a rise and a coming back to a more traditional church.
Some of that is Latin Mass, but a lot of it is pre-Vatican II social norms about divorce and marriage, about premarital sex, about many of the strictures of the old church.
And you're seeing, and I think it is kind of corresponds somewhat to these young men being attracted to what President Trump had to say.
Now, as you know, we have a libertarian tech bro part that would not be it, but you're seeing a lot of traditional evangelicals and traditional Catholics really start to hearken back to an older faith.
And I think that's what you're seeing today.
And I think it's going to really explode.
I believe it's going to explode in public between now and May 7th in this pre-conclave.
And I think it's going to be in the conclave.
And like I said, I think it's going to really be a fight post-conclave.
There's a new book out called Jesus Wet by Philip Shennon, which describes a definitive history of the seven post-war popes.
It devotes eight pages to you, Steve Bannon, saying that you were behind the scenes with Pope Francis' enemies inside the Vatican.
Is that true?
I'm a big fan of that reporter.
He did the definitive work on the commission that looked into President Kennedy's assassination and did a great job.
I think this book is actually an interesting book by a non-Catholic.
I have been very open.
I've worked for years with more of the conservative, traditionalist cardinals and people at the Vatican.
We tried to start a kind of an alternative academy in a monastery that we won an auction years ago, which the Vatican had a big hand in shutting us down, took us to court.
We eventually won in court and we're trying to work to get it back.
So I've been involved to the degree I can help folks do this, pretty involved with folks.
And I got to tell you, behind the scenes, it's been a very tough and vicious fight.
And this will continue on.
It's interesting.
I remember when the Pope first came out and criticized Donald Trump just before, I think it was, on the campaign trail in 2015.
And I think Trump was flying somewhere and the Pope came out and gave him this attack over, you know, need to pull down walls, not build them and so on.
And Trump took him on very publicly.
And in fact, the Vatican backed down pretty quickly and said they weren't talking about a specific candidate and so on.
But it was definitely a retreat by the Pope from his initial, obviously very direct criticism of Trump.
So it was interesting to me then that they had that relationship was quite fractious from the start.
And the Pope, then after that, did continue to poke the Trump bear quite a lot.
Did you think he did that too much?
Was he getting too political?
Well, the Pope is very anti-MAGA.
You know, he's open borders.
He's part of this migration, global compact on migration.
He detested President Trump.
He detested the MAGA movement.
Even in the homily the other day, they took a couple of shots.
They took a couple of shots directly at President Trump.
So there's no love loss.
I thought President Trump, I thought it was great that he and the First Lady went and paid their respects with the other heads of state.
I thought that was appropriate.
But there's no love loss because it's just a huge chasm that separates the beliefs, the political beliefs.
And so I was at Breitbart at the time, and I was one of the people that advocated for President Trump to come back hard on the Pope at the time because that was direct election interference.
And President Trump took a hard shot.
It's the hardest shot any candidate or president's ever taken at a Pope.
It was pretty shocking.
But in a side note, where he said that mass down there is actually we're close to where we built the wall later, my group.
So that was a very contentious time, very contentious.
And that could have really driven votes the other way.
And I'm really glad President Trump stood up.
Well, I mean, again, from memory, but I remember talking to one of his team at the time.
And I think Trump had three pronged attack in response to the Pope criticism.
One of which was that only, I think, 20% of Americans are Catholic.
I don't know if that's still this figure today.
Secondly, that the Pope was, of course, Argentinian, therefore not an American, and therefore shouldn't be poking his nose in, as Trump put it into American affairs.
And thirdly, which I thought was quite a good point, actually.
I'm a Catholic, but I thought it was quite a good rejoinder, which was that the Vatican itself, of course, is protected by a gigantic wall.
I thought it was a great rejoinder.
The Vatican is.
The Vatican is one of the most restrictive places in the world for actually entrance and egress officially, besides this being a tourist.
And so, no, I thought those are great points.
Here's the thing.
President Trump landed, I mean, he landed the criticism.
All of a sudden, it got put back on the Pope.
And I think this was a forerunner of President Trump, the aggressive nature he's going to take.
If you come after him on core policies, he's not going to back down.
And I think that's why so many Catholics, particularly so many church-going Catholics, regular Catholics and working class Catholics peers really respond to President Trump.
And although he's not particularly churchy, they really respond to President Trump and feel they have a real connection with him.
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I do feel he's got a bit more religious since he survived the assassination attempt.
I spoke to him a week afterwards, and he definitely felt that God had spared him in some way.
And after that, I spoke to Reverend Franklin Graham, and he talked about how Trump had told him he was praying more and so on, brought it into his daily routine now and so on.
Have you detected that with Donald Trump?
I think you're the best.
You know, you're one of the few people in all media that have known him over so many decades.
And so I think you're the best judge of it.
From when I've known him, definitely.
There's definitely more of a gravitas.
There's more of a seriousness of purpose, not that it wasn't lacking before, but I think now he realizes that his time could be limited, right, by forces beyond his control.
And that's why I think you're seeing one of the reasons to flood the zone and every day 10 and 12, you know, 10 and 12 executive orders.
And we'll talk about this later in the week.
But I think that's part of that urgency comes for it.
But, you know, you and others have known him for decades.
And I've heard the same thing from a couple of other people, that it's much more of a seriousness and a much more of a deeper, maybe spiritual connection to God.
The conclave to choose a new pope has been announced to start on May the 7th.
So in just under two weeks.
And as you've put it, there clearly is going to be a battle for what the soul of the Catholic Church will be going forward.
What do you think are the key battlegrounds?
What are the key issues you think that are going to be the flashpoints for that debate?
I think the key flashpoint is to avoid a schism.
I think if there's not some acknowledgement that there is a significant part of the church, and particularly the church that's growing with young people in vocations, that if there's not some acknowledgement that the traditionalist movement, and it's not simply Latin Mass, but that's a big part of it, Latin Mass, but pre-Vatican II, unless some, there's rec, we got to really get our arms around Vatican II.
What does it mean?
And what does it mean in the church going forward?
Unless there is some acknowledgement of that in the debates in the conclave, and if the next pope is not come forward and say we have to not just have an open dialogue, we have to have meaningful reform in the church.
I think, and you could know this from what's happening in Britain, being a Catholic with all these young traditional people, I think you're heading to a schism.
I don't think there's this is you can't breach this with happy talk.
This has to be with action.
And so I think that's what this, I think, run up to the conclave is important.
I think the conclave is important, but post-conclave with action, because we could be leading, if it continues down the road of Francis.
And if an acolyte of Francis is chosen, I think you're going to have, I think you're hurtling down the path to schism.
And that's why, you know, over the weekend, there is a group of cardinals that are trying to make the case.
I'm not saying they're going to be successful.
They're trying to make the case that the whole pontificate of Francis is questionable given the retirement of Cardinal Ratzinger or Pope Benedict, and that all the cardinals that were selected by him should not be in the selection process.
I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I know that's being hotly debated behind closed doors in certain sections of Rome today.
So I think if I was a Catholic or someone that believes that the Catholic Church has a huge impact on the world's politics and culture, I would follow this conclave and what's going on around it probably more than it's ever been followed in modern times.
Yeah, because it's a very large number of these cardinals were effectively put there by Pope Francis.
I mean, that's sort of an unusual situation here where presumably he put them there because in the main, they agreed with him.
If you think that you can't vote if you're over 80 years old, I think if you do the sum total of what Pope Francis ordained or put into the College of Cardinals, I think it's something like 70 to 75, almost 80%.
It's an overwhelming majority.
That's why that's enough to get you to two-thirds.
So that's why this fight's taking place right now.
And I don't think this fight's a waste of time.
I believe you're going to have a lot of, it just turns out this week is America Week, where the Papal Foundation, which is a major source of money for the Vatican, happens to have their annual week.
They all come back and meet people in the Vatican and get caught up to speed.
The American church, as you know, I think supplies 70% of the cash.
And the church right now doesn't have, they're not bankrupt because they have tremendous assets, but they have a cash flow problem.
They have a liquidity problem, insolvency problem.
They need American cash.
A lot of the Americans are saying, hey, the growing part of the church, the rejuvenated part of the church are these younger people that are coming in by flocks and we're getting these vocations.
They have to be heard.
So I think they're putting that message out this week that if there's another progressive like Pope Francis, that there's going to be a schism.
And for people to say this, I mean, people do not use that word lightly.
And I don't use that word lightly.
But I think being involved in this now for 10 or 15 years, I can see that coming.
If we have someone else like Francis, I think it's inevitable that in under a decade, we'll have a major schism in the church.
There's never been an American-born pope.
Is this the moment?
I do think one of the dark horses, and I think unfortunately, he's one of the most progressive is Cardinal Prevost.
I don't think he's getting enough play.
He is certainly on the short list as being, and I think it's pretty shocking given how the contempt they hold the American church.
The American church gives so much money, they're afraid it has too much power.
So they've never really wanted to have an American pope.
But my understanding is Prevost is one of the ones closest to Francis ideologically.
He's also had tremendous experience in Latin America.
And so he's one of the ones on the shortlist.
I'm a big believer that Cardinal Seurat from Africa would be a perfect selection right now for this moment in the church.
But I will tell everybody, this is anybody's game right now between Paralon, one of the traditionalists.
You have no earthy idea how this is going to turn out.
That's why I think this time, this run-up is so important.
And it's kind of, it's interesting that it's ironic.
It's going to take place.
It's going to kick off, I think, on either the day of or the day before the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe.
So it's very symbolic of what's coming together here in the first part of May.
And finally, Steve, you know, if he got your wish and it's a conservative pope is elected, you know, imagine the first address he gives to the world.
Just give me three things you want to hear from him.
The first thing is we're going to go back and we're going to solve the issues of Vatican II, that we're going to look to go back to the ancient Catholic Church, the mystery of its services, the mystery of its faith, that we're going to deal with all the opening up that took place in the early 60s and 70s that really made the church much more Protestant in outlook.
You know, our Protestant brothers and sisters have their own faith.
You don't need to water down the Catholic faith.
So I think, number one, we're going to solve the issues and just not kick the can down the road and even do what John Paul II and Bishop and Pope Benedict, who people revered, try to do and trying to have some sort of integration of Vatican II into the ancient faith.
Number two, there's going to be much more prominence of the Latin Mass and the old services.
And number three, all these claims of heresy that were put up by these conservative cardinals are going to be addressed front and center.
We're going to get to all those and clear that up.
I think if he does those three, I think you're going to have a vibrant, robust church.
Remember, Benedict took the name because going back to the dark ages, he said it was better to have a smaller Catholic church, but one that was more united and more faithful to the actual creed of Catholicism than to be 1.4 billion people who didn't really believe in the core tenets of the original church.
I think we're going to get to that moment where we should have gotten to that under Benedict's reign.
I think now we're going to get to it post-Francis.
And I think that for Catholics throughout the world, this will be one of the most fascinating times in the history of the church.
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You just triggered one more question, which is, you've attacked Pope Francis for being a globalist, but doesn't somebody who represents 1.4 billion people, by definition, have to be global in their thinking?
Not his political thinking.
Remember, the church is beyond politics.
The church is about a brotherhood of man.
Obviously, you're thinking of every race, right?
Every ethnicity, both genders, right?
You're talking about everybody's education level from the poor to the wealthy to take the word of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but it's not about politics.
The problem is that the church for many years helped.
I mean, the treaty of Westphalia, the nation-state as a unit where man can get the best control.
Remember, the core teaching of politics, Piers, is subsidiarity.
You try to push it down to its basic level, right?
To the community level, the town council level.
And we figure that the nation-state from the Treaty of Westphalia forward is the best way to kind of govern ourselves and still allow the common man to have some say-so.
So I think politically the problem is Pope Francis was one of the leading progressive politicians in the world.
I mean, that's why he went head to head with Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the populist nationalist leader of now of a global movement, whether that movement's in India with Modi, whether it's in Japan with Abbey and what's left of Abbey's party in the Philippines, in South Korea, particularly in Europe, and in Latin America with Bolsonaro and Millay.
So it was just two different aspects.
You had a progressive Jesuit, right, who was indoctrinated in liberation theology going against a man who was a bayoneter who kind of came and became the leader of a global populist nationalist movement.
And they clashed.
I think it's inevitable they would clash.
And I think it's good and powerful and right that President Trump did go with the First Lady and go to the funeral and pay his respects and reach out to Zelensky at the time and try to put together this deal, which I think also takes place on May 8th on the ceasefire.
Steve Bannon, always great to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
Piers, good to see you again, brother.
Thank you, sir.
Well, joining me now to debate all this is veteran political strategist Roger Stone, the Christian leader and host of the Spoken Word podcast, Bishop Talbot Swan, the author, philosopher, and podcaster Jay Dyer, and the former Catholic, now an Anglican priest, Alberto Coutier.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Bishop Dalba Swan, let me start with you.
There's clearly a big move by a lot of Catholics to restore the church back as they see it.
And Steve Bannon articulated this very well, I thought, back to a more traditional Catholic church.
What do you say to that?
Well, you know, Piers, I think that the death of Pope Francis, it leaves a void, not just in the Catholic Church, but I think in the global fight for justice, compassion, and human dignity.
He basically stood as a living rebuke to this rising tide of Christian nationalism and right-wing populism that has infected communities across America and I think even across the world.
And while many Christian leaders bowed to politics and political expediency, I think Pope Francis chose the narrow path of principle over popularity.
And I think when we talk about traditional Christianity, I think in many respects, those on the right don't even really subscribe to what is traditional Christianity.
When we talk about the gospel commanding love and not exclusion, you know, Jesus taught that the greatest commandment was to love God, love your neighbor, and to love your neighbor as yourself, not to exclude folks, not to deport people, not to choose people based upon their ethnicity or their nationality.
So neighborly love and inclusivity is really the Christian doctrine.
And I think that the right-wing Christianity and Christian nationalism has strayed far away from that.
So I'm not sure what they want to bring it back to, but I think Pope Francis was steering it in the right direction.
Okay, Jay Dyer, I can see you pulling some faces there.
You clearly don't agree.
So why?
Well, first of all, I don't know if he's a Catholic bishop, a Methodist bishop, what kind of bishop this person is, but the Catholic Church used to teach that it's the duty of Christianity to set boundaries.
It's not, number one, inclusivity.
That's a modern term that's been added.
Jesus himself set boundaries.
Jesus himself said that if you love me, you keep my commandments.
And that includes the teachings of the church.
So this idea that Christianity is just this open, feel-good, kumbaya thing is completely made up.
It's completely liberation theology.
And that's why people like this guy love Pope Francis.
Proves Bannon's point that Francis was a liberation theologian.
Not liberation theology.
It literally is.
It's identical to liberation theology.
What you said is word for word liberation theology.
Yes, it is.
Pedagogy of the press.
Exclusion and demonization of people is not what Jesus taught.
He taught to welcome the Pharisees.
But my point would be on this bishop Tulba.
Well, hang on.
My point would be this.
You know, I don't remember when Barack Obama was deporting 3 million people from the United States when he was president.
I don't remember the Pope whacking him.
It did seem to me that Pope Francis, who I personally had a lot of time for and respected hugely, but when he went out of his way to attack Trump, I did think that was deviating out of the norm.
You know, why should Trump be attacked for his immigration policies when Obama, a Democrat president, had deported millions of people?
Well, I think the major difference is Trump ran his campaign on the promise of mass deporting individuals.
What's the difference?
I mean, one promised to do it and then didn't do it quite as much as his predecessor.
Obama deported way more people than Trump ever did in his first term.
Way more.
And there were many, and particularly those of us from the liberation theological perspective, who condemned Obama for those deportations.
But the pope or not.
The popes of the day.
But I thought you weren't a liberation theologian.
I thought you weren't.
Now you aren't.
I didn't say I wasn't.
I said what you were saying was not liberation theology.
Okay, let me bring in Roger Stone.
Roger, so Roger, let me just start by reading something you posted on X.
The day after the Pope died, Pope Francis essentially gave the Chinese Communist Party veto power over who the bishops of the Catholic Church could be in China.
Because God's judgment is perfect, Pope Francis burns in hell for his accommodation with evil.
Did you really mean that, Roger Stone?
Well, it may have been a bit extreme, but here is the thing.
When I grew up, and I'm relatively, yeah, I'm relatively new in my faith rock.
I was baptized a Catholic, but I have also only more recently been redeemed in the blood of the cross.
But let me say this, when I grew up under the Catholic Church of Fulton Sheen, the Catholic Church was a bulkwork against anti-communism or against communism, against authoritarianism, whether it was in China or whether it was in Russia or whether it was in Poland.
So yes, I find the accommodation with the Chinese Communist Party, which is one of the most brutal, vicious regimes on the face of the earth.
This is a place where those who practice Falen Gong are arrested and their organs are harvested.
I find accommodation with evil to be evil itself.
The Pope's embrace of Marxism, his acceptance of a crucifix from the leader of, I think it was, Bolivia that was endorned with a hammer and sickle.
That is not the Catholic Church of Pope John II that I prefer.
Okay, Alberto Cutia, I could see you nodding there.
Do you agree, Roger Stone?
I'm a Cuban American, so I wrote the Pope a letter in 2015 when he went to meet with Fidel Castro, the dictator, the oppressor.
My father was a political prisoner twice, and I said to the Pope directly, and I love Pope Francis, by the way, but I disagree with him in his politics.
He said straight out, I said to him, listen, you condemn capitalism quite frequently, but you never condemn communism and socialism and all the harm that it has done.
I mean, communism is, in fact, an atheist doctrine.
It rejects God.
And so for me, it was very difficult, you know, as a Cuban American from this community to see the Pope, you know, who we believe is the successor of St. Peter, the Bishop of Rome, who we look up to and admire as someone that would go and embrace the oppressor and not the oppressed.
And there were people who wanted to meet with him, by the way, the ladies in white in Havana, you know, who protest after Mass.
There were people that wanted to meet with the Pope and wanted to be heard, but they made no time for the oppressed.
They did have time for the oppressor, and that was very offensive to us as the Cuban-American community.
Bishop Thorbus Won, what's your response to that?
Well, I think he would be accurate if that's the case, because I believe wholeheartedly what the late James Cohn said, that any authentic theology must affirm that God is on the side of the oppressed.
In many respects, Francis' papacy defended the marginalized, the poor, the disabled, the planet itself.
And his critiques, to many of us who followed him, were not political, but they were profoundly theological.
Obviously, there were some inconsistencies in the actions around his theological perspective.
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Yeah, Jay Dyer, you've been very critical of Pope Francis.
Said the next Pope needs to stop bending the knee to wokeness, to ecumenism, to ultimately a one-world religion in particular.
It did seem whatever side of the Pope Francis debate you sat, everyone accepted he was a pretty liberal pope by the standards of modern popes.
And, you know, liberalism in the sort of more progressive interpretation of it has been repudiated all around the world, pretty much in political elections, which would lend some succor, I would argue, to the thought that maybe the Pope should move with the actual times, which is to be perhaps a bit more traditional, to be less progressive.
But actually, many Catholics have actually recoiled against the attempt to make it more progressive.
Yeah, but the problem is, and when Bannon was on earlier, he made some great points on this issue.
But the problem is that you've already dogmatized the documents of Vatican II in the Roman Catholic system.
So there is no way to go back to a pre-Vatican II church or to create some new reform movement.
There's multiple statements from the Vatican itself, particularly Francis more recent in 2017, even said that the reforms of Vatican II are irreversible, irreversible, and magisterial.
So there is no way to go back to some pre-Vatican II church.
It's just a fiction that a lot of traditional Catholics tell themselves.
And of course, I'm a big fan of Francis because he is a great apologist for Orthodox Christianity.
We've had more people convert to Orthodoxy under Francis than ever before.
So he's sending them our way.
And I don't think you're going to get anybody better than Francis since he appointed 108 of the 135 cardinals.
They're all going to be Francis 2.0.
Yeah, that's very interesting because I think that is likely to happen.
Roger Stone, one of the issues that Pope Francis fully embraced was the war in Gaza, but he seemed to fully embrace it from a pro-Palestinian perspective.
I think he famously, every evening, he telephoned a Catholic church in Gaza throughout the entire war, right up to his death.
Every night, I think he made this phone call.
But his position seemed to be so partisan, if you like, towards the Palestinian position on it that Israel removed condolence tweets to the Pope it had put out and only sent an envoy to the funeral.
There was a perception he was quite anti-Israel.
A, do you agree with that perception?
And B, is it important, whoever becomes the next pope, that they are not perhaps seen to be taking sides in a war like that?
Or is the point of a pope that he should take sides sometimes?
No, I think it is yet another example of the pope getting into politics.
He has no criticism for Marxism, but he criticizes capitalism.
He has no criticism for radical Islam, but he praises or reaches accommodations with the Chinese.
He calls President Trump's immigration policy anti-Christian, interference in an American election.
I'd like to return to a time when the Pope speaks to matters of faith.
The church certainly needs it, but he needs to stay out of American and frankly, world politics.
That is not his role.
I mean, what is the role of the Pope as far as you're concerned?
It is to speak to matters of the Bible and the church and church dogma.
But I do think he has an obligation to oppose oppression and authoritarianism and brutality, whether it is on the left or the right.
Okay.
Alberto Coutier, there's obviously a huge battle going to rage over who the next pope should be.
Bishop Tilda and Celibacy 00:05:45
As Jay Dyer said, a large, large number of these cardinals were basically appointed by the progressive Pope Francis.
So it is highly likely that you're going to get, you know, Pope Francis Mark II coming through this, but not a certainty.
Steve Bannon talked about Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea, who said that mass migration is destroying the West, argued that Islam will replace it.
He would also, if he won, would be the first black pope.
For many on the conservative side or more traditionalist side of Catholicism, he would be... a good option.
But is there any chance that someone like him actually wins?
I don't think that if you have a college that's going to be about 133 of them, I believe, 108 of them have been appointed by Francis.
And yes, Pope Francis is a restorer, if you will, of Vatican II ideology, but I don't consider him a liberal, not one bit.
I've known Cardinal Bergoglio, or I should say Pope Francis, since he was Cardinal Bergoglio.
I knew him in the Vatican.
I worked with him and people who worked with him.
I still have friends that are very close to him.
To call him a liberal is to not understand Pope Francis.
Pope Francis is a Jesuit.
Nobody wants to talk about that.
And nobody really knows what a Jesuit is thinking.
But believe me, this man's far from liberal.
And he was progressive in many of his views of the world.
But to call him a liberal would be to misunderstand his entire papacy.
You yourself had to leave the Catholic Church because you fell in love with a woman.
Does the Catholic Church need to have a more liberal view of these things?
I mean, should it be?
The Catholic Church has plenty of married priests.
He says, people don't know that.
In all the Eastern rites of the church, celibacy is optional.
Celibacy is only mandatory in the Western right, which is where I was born and raised.
Now, I do believe celibacy is a good thing for the church when it is lived well, you know, when there is chastity, when people are living their life dedicated to God.
Celibacy becomes tragic when it's a place to hide homosexuality, to hide other types of situations.
And unfortunately for many in the world, celibacy has become that, if you will.
It's become kind of a way of life rather than what is meant to be a total dedication to God.
At the same time, I want to say that there are many celibate priests that are good, that are happy, that are dedicated.
But the fact is there are many priests who are married.
If an Anglican, for example, that grows up Anglican, Church of England or Anglican somewhere else in the world, becomes Roman Catholic, he can come with his wife and children and he's permitted to be a priest in the church.
And a lot of people don't know that.
We do have married priests, plenty of married Catholic priests.
You're suggesting there's a pretty large dollar per double standard going on.
I don't know if it's a double standard.
I think it has to do with canonical practice.
All the last three popes have said openly, since St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict, they've said celibacy is a discipline of the church.
It's not a dogma.
It's not a doctrine, but it can change in the future.
They were all open to that change.
Even Pope Benedict, I know, sent out several questionnaires about it to other cardinals.
He's not the first pope that's done that.
Bishop Thomas Swan, is it time for women priests in the Catholic Church?
Well, I think it's time for women priests and preachers across the board throughout Christianity.
I think even in my denomination where we do not ordain women, we are behind the times when it comes to recognizing the full humanity of the talents and the gifts of women and what their contributions can be toward ministry.
Jay, you don't look very convinced.
No, I think Bishop Tilda Swinton is way off there because women were never ordained in the history of the church to the priesthood or to the bishopric.
It's always been forbidden.
And again, it's just liberation theology that he's pushing.
And then he says he's not personally pushing liberation theology, but actually it is liberation theology.
He's already contradicted himself.
That is what you said.
Literally, everything you laid out was liberation theology.
I know.
Your definition, your opening statement, your opening statement was liberation.
Obviously, you got a problem with liberation theology, but that's your problem.
Your opening statement, and it's not historical person.
I didn't ascribe to liberation theology.
I said your definition.
You outline inclusivity.
Okay, but Jay, but Jay, all right.
Hang on.
Time out.
Time out.
Jay, out of interest.
Jay, out of interest, why should there not be women priests?
Well, it's not what Christ laid down.
Christ laid down the tradition of the church to only have a male priesthood and to only have women being in a certain role.
It's not that women can't be involved in the church.
And you notice his fallacy there.
He said that it means that he said women are not fully human.
And if you don't believe in them being in the priesthood, it has nothing to do with their humanity.
It has to do with roles.
And women are not made for every role.
They're not made to be in men's sports, for example, right?
It's the same logic that this guy has in terms of his liberation theology.
Bishop Talbert Swan, my name is not this guy.
You've been dealing with me in a very disrespectful way.
Bishop Tilda Swimming, excuse me.
Bishop Tilda Swimming.
Well, let's try and keep things respectful.
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Women Priests and Inclusion 00:08:29
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Stone, should there be women priests?
I think not.
I don't think that that's what the Bible says.
I don't think that's what God had in mind.
The other problem I have here, Pierce, is the fact that Cardinal Francis brought back Cardinal McCarrick, who we know was a vicious pedophile, appointed him as a special counselor.
I think this sends a terrible sign.
The church has been plagued by pedophilia.
The church has dealt with it, but to bring McCarrick back, who was ultimately defrocked once we learned how horrific his crimes were, is a very bad sign.
And yet another, I think, accommodation with evil by Pope Francis.
If I can come back to you, Alberto Gujier, the continuity choice, as he's being described, is the Vatican Secretary of State and Pope Francis' chief advisor, Pietro Paroline.
He's the bookie's favorite, but would he just be literally doing exactly what Pope Francis would want him to do?
And is that a good thing for the Catholic Church right now?
I think everyone is a good candidate, to be honest with you, all 133 of them, because the fact is, we have a saying in the church, right?
If he goes in a pope, he comes out a cardinal.
We don't really know who will be elected, but I'll tell you this.
Perolyn was one of the closest people to Pope Francis from the very beginning.
I'm sure he would continue a lot.
But remember, everyone has their personality.
There will not be another Francis.
And who knows what the next person will bring?
Maybe the person will bring more unity among conservatives and liberals.
I have seen from a distance, I've been an Anglican for 16 years now, but I was a Roman Catholic priest for 15 years.
And I can tell you that I've never seen so much disunity in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in the U.S., you know, between extreme liberals, like to the point where they go nuts and to the, you know, the extreme conservatives with the point everything has to be this way.
And in Latin, I mean, they've got to at some point come together as a church.
It happens to us as Anglicans.
It happens in every church where there's extremes.
I think with Pope Francis, there's been more division among ideological groups than I've ever seen in the recent history of the church.
So whoever comes next needs to be a unifier is what I think, and needs to kind of bring back people and not.
I mean, if you really say, like he said, that the church is for everyone, it's got to be for everyone, you know?
And ideologically, we have to be open enough.
And I agree with the bishop 100%.
You know, the Bible teaches us inclusion.
Love, love one another.
That's the number one rule Jesus Christ left the church.
Love one another as I have loved you.
If we're not about love, then we can't be the church of Jesus Christ.
But if you're going to be the church of inclusion, the Catholic Church, should it not include women priests?
Well, I think women have the right to be priests.
I think that the book of Genesis says God created us male and female in his image.
Women and men both image Jesus Christ.
Also, is there much doubt, really?
I mean, obviously, Jesus Christ was of a time.
If he was around today, I can't imagine in a million years that Jesus Christ would not think it perfectly reasonable, fair, and equitable to allow women priests.
It was only that he made that.
You can't tell my daughter, oh, you can be a, you know, you can be a judge in the Supreme Court of your country, but you can't be clergy in your church.
And I'm not saying that the church has to go that route, but the pope himself, Pope Francis, nobody talks about it now.
He was exploring women deacons during the early years of his papacy.
He sent out documents to many bishops and cardinals and advisors in the world, men and women theologians.
And he was this close to getting into that ordination of women, at least the diaconate, which is the first of all the orders in the church.
And I got to be honest with you, I'm surprised he didn't go through with it because even though my brothers here say it's not in the Bible, Phoebe was a deacon and she's in the New Testament and she was a deacon in the time of Paul.
So I believe that there are deacons and there are priests in the early church, even though we may not want to recognize it now.
Yeah, Jay Dyer, I mean, I just can't imagine a modern day Jesus Christ would not have a modern view of this.
I mean, it was a view at the time only dictated by social reality and norm.
It wasn't dictated by anything else, surely.
And if you are going to preach inclusion, then what's inclusive about only allowing men to be priests?
It seems very sexist.
Well, I mean, I don't preach inclusion.
I don't think that that is the essence of the gospel or Jesus' teaching.
I think both the people flanking me have chosen one side and one piece of what Christ taught and neglected the rest of what he taught, which is boundaries, which is tradition, which is what the church handed down.
I mean, the Roman Catholic Church itself has always forbidden this.
And the fact that Francis was exploring it literally proves Francis' revolutionary ethos.
I mean, the Anglican guy next to me said that Francis wasn't a liberal.
And then he literally lists all the liberal policies that show he was a liberal.
The fact that he's a Jesuit has nothing to do with whether he's liberal or not.
It proves the point that, yeah, Francis is a revolutionary and Jesus laid down a tradition that is unchanging.
And the church itself already said you can't change these things.
So it would just be contradicting the religion and it would make Christianity into cookie enity.
Okay, let's end with asking all of you the same question.
Who would you like to see elected the next pope?
I'll start with you, Bishop Thomas Juan.
Well, I think that many hope to see the church retreat from the progressive path that Pope Francis chartered during his papacy.
And I believe that they want the next pope to bless their nationalism, to justify their cruelty and basically baptize their greed.
I don't think that should happen.
I think the next pope, whoever he is, should be selected based on not on the comfort of the powerful, but on the cries of the vulnerable and stand firmly in the tradition of prophetic Christianity, one that centers what Jesus called the least of these rather than catering to the fears of the privileged.
So give me a name.
I think there are several popes that he charted a path so that potentially we could have for the first time ever an African pope, someone who is black.
And I think that that may be in the best interest.
And so I'd like to see it happen.
Okay, Roger Stone.
I think there are three choices.
Okay, Roger Stone.
Roger Stone, who should be Pope?
Well, first of all, that was a bastardization of what we believe.
But secondarily, I guess I would go with Cardinal Sarah as my first choice.
Cardinal Erdo of Hungary is my second choice.
But keep an eye on the dark horse.
That would be Pizzabola, who I think is a very interesting choice, who may be able to bridge this gap and have a more unified church.
Okay, Alberto Coutier, your choice.
I hope he uses the name Francis II, just because I do believe that we need more of that Franciscan spirit in the church, the humility, the simplicity.
I love his shoes, by the way.
I don't know if you saw the shoes in the casket.
Normal working man speaks a lot about the man.
But the other thing is this.
That young Filipino, Cardinal Tagali, he's an Asian.
The church in Asia is growing, leaps and bounds.
And that would bring someone young, energetic, like John Paul II was when he started his papacy.
And I really do believe that someone like that would be great.
But I say it again, whoever God wants.
That's who I want.
Okay.
Jay Dyer, who should be the next Pope?
Well, Katy Perry went into space and contacted the divine feminine.
So I guess the guy's flanking me.
Maybe Katy Perry would be the next option since she's a woman.
She's met the divine feminine, the goddess out in space.
And maybe we need to evolve into worshiping the goddess.
Katie Perry to be the next pope.
Let's leave it on that bombshell.
Thank you all very much indeed to my panel.
Katie Perry as Next Pope 00:00:30
Thank you.
We will await the puff of white smoke.
Thank you.
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