Pope Francis was an equal opportunities thorn in the side

On Easter Sunday morning, social media posters happily confirmed that Pope Francis had declined a meeting with US vice-president JD Vance. Social media got it wrong of course.

On the most crowded weekend of the church’s Jubilee Year, the US vice-president managed to organise a brief, awkward meeting with a visibly struggling pope who had repeatedly criticised his policies and rhetoric. No fewer than 40 4x4s were considered necessary for the 17-minute visit to Vatican City.

The Pope’s death within 24 hours of the encounter launched a thousand memes depicting Vance as the Grim Reaper and others which greeted the Pope’s death as a win for Maga: “Hopefully we can get a pro-Trump, conservative Pope in now”.

It was a reminder that a pope routinely criticised for achieving nothing also managed to regularly infuriate arch-conservatives, not just within his own Curia but among US Catholics. Asked about the verbal assaults against him in 2019, he called it “an honour that Americans attack me”. He characterised the influential conservative Catholic TV channel, EWT...
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