Bernie Sanders Itinerary in Rome will Not include Pope Francis Visit
It looks as if Bernie Sanders’s brief Roman holiday will not include a meeting with Pope Francis.
In a routine briefing with reporters in the Vatican press office on Thursday, the spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, was asked if the pope would meet with academics and politicians, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who are participating in a Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences conference on Friday.
“There won’t be a meeting with the Holy Father,” Father Lombardi said.
A papal encounter was always going to be a long shot for Mr. Sanders, whose trip is not on an official visit to the Holy See. The politician was never scheduled to have an audience with Pope Francis, and the conference is not exactly the “high-level meeting” that the Sanders campaign billed it as in its news release about the trip. But as recently as Wednesday, Mr. Sanders was still hopeful for a face-to-face with the pontiff.
The New York Times
This was always painfully obvious since: 1) the Pope was scheduled to be out of town; 2) the conference Sanders is attending is a dry academic symposium, not an earth-shaking policy session; and 3) Pope Francis is a smart enough politician to know there’s no up-side to interfering in another nation’s elections. Still, a surprising number of Sanders fans seemed to believe that a “miraculous” appearance would occur at the coffee break following Sanders’ speech.
Sorry.