"Pope Francis’ Once-Soaring Popularity Has Dropped Dramatically, New Poll Says"

The idiot pope is part of the coverup of the priests and bishops who like to have their way with little boys. The child abuse is completely out of control.

This New York Times article is about Catholics who used to like the pope but they don't like him now. But still they go to church and put their money into the collection basket, apparently not caring their cash will be used to help pay for the lawsuits for the child abuse.

There is only one way to end the child abuse. Catholics need to stop being Catholics. This should be easy to do because Catholicism, like every other moronic religious cult, is 100% pure bullshit.

If the disgusting Catholic Church had no customers there would no Catholic Church. The assholes who control the Catholic Church business could still make some money from the tourists who want to see the ancient paintings at the Vatican but there would be no more child abuse and the pope would have to get a real job.

Catholics are cowards. They will never admit their god fantasy is bullshit. They can't exist without their magic fairy.

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New York Times - Pope Francis’ Once-Soaring Popularity Has Dropped Dramatically, New Poll Says

By Laurie Goodstein

October 2, 2018

The sexual abuse scandal has undermined Pope Francis’ once-soaring popularity in the United States, with a poll released on Tuesday showing that support for the pontiff has dropped precipitously among Americans.

A new Pew poll shows that only 51 percent of Americans now rate him favorably, a fall of 19 percentage points since January 2017.

Francis has retained the support of seven in 10 American Catholics, but that has dropped from about eight in 10 since January of this year, when the sexual abuse scandal re-emerged as an international crisis for the Roman Catholic Church.

The survey results, which echo two other polls last month also showing steep declines, show that Francis’ reputation, which once seemed unassailable, has sustained considerable damage in the wake of the sex abuse scandal. Until recently, the pope appeared to be a rare public figure who attracted broad appeal among Americans.

But since January, Francis has been forced to dismiss bishops in Chile accused of covering up abuse, and has himself been accused by a former Vatican diplomat of failing to discipline an abusive American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington. A shocking grand jury report in Pennsylvania released in August compounded the alarm.

Now only 31 percent of American Catholics rate Francis’ handling of the church’s long-running sex abuse scandal as good or excellent, down from 54 percent in February 2014, about one year into his papacy, according to the survey, by the Pew Research Center.

Francis has strongly condemned child sexual abuse and called a worldwide meeting of bishops in February to address abuse in the church. But he has refused to respond to the allegations from a Vatican diplomat, who has opposed Francis’ reformist agenda, that Francis himself was negligent in handling then-Cardinal McCarrick. His silence has left many American Catholics unsettled.

“To learn that the pope has possibly had any sort of role in this is frightening,” said Lisa Bloomfield, a 34-year-old in Cincinnati who attends Mass several times a week. “It’s not the time to be silent. It’s the time to face these questions head on. It’s time to root out the evil.”

Ms. Bloomfield leans conservative, politically and theologically, and has become increasingly concerned that Francis is confusing the faithful about church doctrine on marriage and sexuality. As with many conservative Catholics, the abuse scandal has proved to be a breaking point.

She said of Francis, “I would say I was still dating him but hesitant, and this summer I broke up with him for sure.”

The Pew survey confirms that American Catholics are polarized over Francis along political lines — a stark contrast from 2014, one year into his papacy, when Catholic Democrats and Republicans were virtually aligned in their positive opinions on him. About nine in 10 rated him favorably, no matter their political affiliations.

Now Catholics who are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party are far more likely to have a favorable opinion of Francis than Catholics who are Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party, 83 percent compared with 61 percent, the new poll shows.

(The poll was conducted from Sept. 18 to 21 among 1,754 adults, including 336 Catholics. The margin of error is 2.7 percentage points for the pool of all adults, and 6.2 percent for the Catholic subgroup.)

The poll results are a far cry from Francis’ first years as pope, when he won the hearts of Catholics worldwide, whatever their political leanings, with his emphasis on love, mercy and compassion for vulnerable people. He won praise for teaching by example, cradling to his chest a badly disfigured man at a public audience in St. Peter’s Square.

News cameras followed as he hosted lunch for the homeless, and bent down to wash the feet of prisoners in the Holy Thursday ritual. His folksy tweets, on a range of topics from marriage to environmentalism, were retweeted eight times more frequently than those of President Barack Obama. In Italy, a celebrity gossip magazine publisher launched a weekly “My Pope” fanzine to dispense the pope’s advice and photographs.

His popularity in the United States soared after he visited in 2015, when he praised Martin Luther King III in an address to Congress and embraced an immigrant girl who broke through security barriers to reach his popemobile.

The first pope from Latin America, and the first from the Jesuit religious order, he seemed to bring the fresh breeze the Catholic Church needed after the shocking resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

A year after he was elected, a poll found Francis was wildly popular with American Catholics, with a broad majority saying that he represented a change for the good in the direction of the church. Some Catholic commentators anticipated a “Francis effect” that would buoy participation and membership in the church.

But as Francis began to make his program clear, there was a growing backlash from conservatives. He voiced openness toward gay people, expressed good will toward Muslims, and issued a landmark teaching document that — albeit in a footnote — appeared to allow divorced and remarried Catholics who had not received a marriage annulment to take communion.

The church in the United States, more than in most other countries, has become divided along ideological lines that mirror the nation’s political divide. The result is that liberal-leaning and moderate Catholics, despite their horror at the sexual abuse scandal, are far more reluctant to blame Francis himself.

Dr. Tom C. Keller, an internist in Freeland, Md., grew up going to Jesuit schools, is active in his parish and sends his daughter to an all-girls Catholic school. He praised Francis for opening up the discussion in the church on subjects such as homosexuality and communion for the divorced, “even if he hasn’t really changed anything.”

He said that the new revelations about the church hierarchy ignoring victims and keeping abusers in ministry was heartbreaking, especially as a parent.

“They completely broke my trust. I’m almost like a beaten spouse, so to speak,” Dr. Keller said in an interview.

But he said that he does not hold Francis responsible. “I think he came into this mess,” Dr. Keller said. “I think he has tried to do what he can, but I do think at this point he needs to do more. Going forward, if we don’t see some changes, then he is going to be held responsible.”

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 3, 2018, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Pope’s Popularity Drops in the U.S., Even Among Catholics. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe