Jesse Romero, a Catholic podcaster based in Phoenix, Arizona, says the time has come for a “Trump-like pope” who will restore traditional Christian values in the wake of Pope Francis’s death.
“Anyone who’s soft on abortion, who has Marxist tendencies, who’s pro-homosexual — we’ve got to get rid of them,” the conservative influencer and author said. “There are bishops who have marched on Pride parades . . . they’ve got to be fired.”
Romero is one of a growing cohort of conservative Catholics in the US who hope that Francis’s death will mark a decisive shift away from the reformism he personified, towards a more doctrinaire, traditionalist approach to the faith.