House Speaker McCarthy Met With Pope Francis in Vatican

(AmericanProsperity.com) – House Speaker and California Republican Kevin McCarthy had a meeting on Thursday with Pope Francis in the Vatican. Social media users claimed this was quite surprising considering that the Catholic leader has been consistently accused of having a left-wing bias that is shown not only in Latin American politics but in the US as well.

As reported by Reuters, the Vatican shared numerous pictures of the private meeting but provided no details of their conversation. Despite this issue, the media outlet pointed out this is quite common every time the Pope meets with a world leader.

Over the last few decades, active US House Speakers have met with popes, regardless of their political affiliation. This was the same case of McCarthy, who led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Middle Eastern nations Egypt, Jordan, and Israel earlier this week.

In 2022, former House Speaker and California Democrat Nancy Pelosi receive communion from the Pope during a papal mass, amid scandal over whether the liberal leader was able to receive communion. After all, she previously showed a hardline stance in favor of abortion, which prompted many criticisms from Catholic leaders all over the world, with some of them claiming she didn’t deserve this holy rite. 

The Republican House Speaker is the first non-Catholic since Illinois Republican Dennis Hastert, who finished his term in 2007. In different opportunities, McCarthy has said he is a proud member of the Valley Baptist Church, which is located in Bakersfield, California.

While former House Speaker and Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich was a Baptist while in office, he later converted to Catholicism, in a move that many on his base criticized back in the day. This political leader also had a relationship with the Catholic leader, considering that his wife Callista was the United States Ambassador to the Vatican during the term of former President Donald Trump.

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