calling francis fatigue. it s displacing the francis effect. he started off so high. what s your response to that? well, my first response is, victor, it s not a popularity contest for him. i mean, it s not exactly an election he sought, that he wanted. he s not looking to be re-elected. and so, i don t think that these polls matter to him or to the vatican. having said that, you re going to start off high with a lot of popularity. and then, when you start to make decisions or some would say not make decisions, those polls are going to be impacted. conservatives are kind of angry at him because of his views on capitalism, the environment, immigration. liberals are saying, why isn t he saying more about same-sex marriage? women priests? married priests? you re damned if you do, damned if you don t, if you can talk about being damned with the pope at all.
come up, too. or perhaps for women priests or gay priests. that as well. i m going to say it again, merry christmas. it s lovely to speak to you. so glad to have these last two days with you. happy new year, father beck. same to you, ashleigh. this time of year we assess who are the winners and losers this time of year and we re going to take the legal view for those who had a banner year and those who had a not so good year. that s next.
xxiii wasn t going to snap his fingers and make women priests. john paul ii was as much a critic of capitalism as he was of communism. no one would call benedict xvi a liberal, yet he called for the redistribution of wealth and said health care is a fundamental human right. i think what s happening here is a call for unity and yes, there are people who identify john xxiii on the progressive side and john paul ii on the conservative side. i ll agree with you so far. i think what francis is calling for is a big noah s arc church where we have to love each other even if we don t like each other all the time but looking for a church of both ends. i think what s really going on here is that pope francis is canonizing the second vatican council, that great meeting of the church that john xxiii started and john paul ii implemented with paul vi in the middle. we re in the 50th anniversary of
years. of dogma, basically. he softens his tone on gay marriage and abortion and has spoken out more with the whole sex abuse of children scandal. so he is at least talking about it. but it will take a long time before he can get the word out. can t just say i will allow women priests and gay marriage. it is not that simple to win people over. sure. it s like congress and the senate here. he has to go through a bunch of factions within the church. he is getting the word out and using twitter, for instance. he has 3.2 million twitter followers. that is 700,000 less than piers morgan. 46 million less than the antichrist. some refer to him as the bieber, justin bieber. he only follows eight people which is all him in different languages. that s fascinating.
women priests and gay marriage. it is not that simple to win people over. it is like congress and the senate. he has to go through a bunch of factions within the church. he is getting the word out and using twitter. he has 3.2 million twitter followers. that is 700,000 less than piers morgan. i would have thought he had more. he only follows eight people which is all him in different languages. piers morgan i hope you are watching somewhere. he wrote me and said make sure you use me in context with the pope. something like that. and now to a very much more serious story but one that has been fascinating me all weekend. a freak accident at sea left an elderly man dead, his widow