Last week, Republican presidential contender and devout Catholic Rick Santorum threw some shade at Pope Francis. Santorum said that he was a “huge fan” of His Holiness, but took issue with Francis aligning himself with 97 percent of climate scientists and speaking out on global warming. The church had “gotten it wrong a few times on science,” Santorum remarked, adding that the pope should stick to “theology and morality” instead of, say, talking about arctic melt.
Santorum isn’t the only cafeteria Catholic running for the Republican nomination in 2016. Marco Rubio, along with rumored runners Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie, are also pretty selective about when they stand with their main man Francis. When it comes to denying people reproductive health care and saying that gay couples can’t get married, the GOP’s Catholic is behind the Holy Father, drawing a direct line from their policies to their faith. But when Francis takes on the death penalty, income inequality and the “tyranny” of free market capitalism, Rubio, Bush and co. tend to have their own ideas about what Jesus would do.
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