Pope Francis’s approval ratings have plummeted to a record low among U.S. Catholics after a series of child sex scandals and cover ups have finally turned his own flock against him.
According to Alan Cooperman, the director of the Pew Research Center, the Pope Francis’ negative approval ratings are primarily a reflection of how badly he has handled the clergy pedophilia crisis.
Speaking this week during an interview on the Catholic Channel on SiriusXM radio, Cooperman told host John L. Allen Jr. that disapproval rate for the pontiff had tripled, and that Pope Francis, who has a long history of protecting pedophile priests from justice, only has himself to blame.
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According to Breitbart, only 30 percent of Catholic adults say Francis is doing an “excellent” or a “good” job addressing the sex abuse crisis, the Pew Research Center found in its most recent survey on the issue, a decline of 24 points since 2015 and 14 points from when Pew last asked the question this past January.
Similarly, a CNN poll in September showed the pope’s approval rating among U.S citizens falling to an all-time low, dropping below 50 percent for the first time since his election in 2013.
This week, the pope forbade the U.S. bishops from voting on new measures to address clerical sex abuse, a move that can only bring his approval ratings lower still.
According to the papal ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the reason for the last-minute suspension of the vote was Francis’s concern for “communion,” meaning he wants the whole Church to move together rather than having national bishops’ conferences make their own policies — a justification that many observers find untenable.
The pope has convoked the presidents of the national Catholic bishops’ conferences to meet with him in Rome next February to discuss what can be done worldwide to address the issue.
More and more people, however, are seeing Pope Francis as part of the problem rather than part of the solution when it comes to clerical sex abuse.
Not only has Francis refused to answer allegations against him personally; he has also denied requests by the U.S. bishops to open a formal Vatican investigation into the McCarrick case.
In September, the president of the U.S. Bishops Conference (USCCB), Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, traveled to Rome to urge Francis to launch the investigation but returned to the U.S. empty-handed.
“Back in 2014, 54 percent of American Catholics thought he was doing a good or excellent job,” Mr. Cooperman said Monday.
“Today it’s down to just 3 in 10, 30 percent of U.S. Catholics giving him a good or excellent, dropping 24 points in four years, 14 points just from the beginning of 2018.”
In comparison to previous popes, Francis is not seen particularly well, Cooperman said.
“For a while, he had a far higher favorability than Benedict, but I think that now he’s dropped down to Benedict’s level and even below it,” he said.
Baxter Dmitry
Email: baxter@thepeoplesvoice.tv
The same poope who tried to encourage his followers NOT to have a personal relationship with Jesus and allowed Islamic prayer in the Vatican, you have to be a non bible believing Christian to believe any of this non sense
Just ask people like myself who have been at the hands of this dreadful organization ,run by this moron the catholic church must demand his arrest and his brothers ,who has covered up for years.I am a survivor of this monster but my brother died of his injuries