Let's see -- The Pope, climate change, rightwingers, and Stalin -- a little something for everyone here.
In June 2015 Pope Francis issued his encyclical Laudato Si' in which he decreed that doing nothing about climate change is a sin. Tea Partiers, rightwingers, and Republicans flipped out, demanding that the Pope stay out of politics.
Not so fast.
Before the right goes too far in attacking the Pope, they might want to consider the example of Josef Stalin, who said:
"The Pope! How many divisions has he got?"
(Said sarcastically to Pierre Laval in 1935, in response to being asked whether he could do anything with Russian Catholics to help Laval win favour with the Pope, to counter the increasing threat of Nazism; as quoted in The Second World War (1948) by Winston Churchill vol. 1, ch. 8, p. 105.)
Stalin was saying, because the Pope does not have an army with hundreds of divisions, he is powerless. Yet, Stalin's empire is in the dustbin of history while the Pope's empire is intact. By the same token, the Pope's empire will still be here long after the GOP is gone.