Discussing the new Pope

 So....we got a new Pope already. His name is Richard Prevost, a priest from right here in America, and he chose the name Leo XIV. 

Honestly, I'm not catholic, but I understand the pope's words have moral weight in the world at large, so I tend to respect a pope if he's somewhat good. I liked Pope Francis, despite not being a christian and being quite hostile to the religion, for example. He set the bar for what a good pope looks like for me, and his shoes seemed tough to fill. 

When I first heard the pope was gonna be American, I thought they chose that one super conservative american cardinal. I was like OH GOD WHY?! But then this guy was a relative unknown and he's different, and was seen as a "moderate" and "balanced" choice. With that said, I'd need to scrutinize him to see how he matches up.

So...to get the bad out of the way. He's anti LGBT+, anti trans and "gender ideology", pro life, anti contraception, and your normal cringey conservative positions on sex stuff we've come to expect from catholics.  

But then he's pro immigration (much needed in this trumpian era), progressive on racial issues, critical of the Trump administration and on economics, well, he apparently chose the name Leo because the last Leo we had as pope was so during the gilded age and he was super pro worker. So that's based.

Again, when dealing with the catholic church, I've come to expect socially conservative but economically left in the best case scenario. I mean, things would be better if we just didn't listen to old and outdated religious dogmas in general, but yeah, this is the most positive form of christianity we can expect and i actually kinda respect it. Much better than the die hard protestants. If it pisses off the Trumpers, and it is, that's a very good sign. I cant expect the church to modernize its social teachings, but it can at least advocate for economic justice and even social justice outside of their weird hangups on sex related topics. 

Basically, he's closer to pope francis than your typical christian nationalist who I've come to despise.