MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera almost rained on MSNBC’s celebration of the election of Pope Leo XIV. While the rest of the network has celebrated his rebukes of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Cabrera asked NBC’s man in Rome, Claudio Lavanga, what Leo thinks of abortion and “the LGBTQ community.” Rather than subject MSNBC’s liberal audience to some uncomfortable truths, Lavanga dodged the subject in hilarious fashion by talking about unrelated topics before finally suggesting it is unknown what Leo thinks of those topics.
Cabrera asked, “Claudio, I want to quote from then-Cardinal Robert Prevost, and this is what he has said, “We are often worried about teaching doctrine, but we risk forgetting that our first duty is to communicate the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus.” That was an interview with Vatican News. Claudio, do we know where Pope Leo stands on the issues like abortion, the LGBTQ community, women in the church, etc?”
Like a politician who make sure he got his talking points in, Lavanga replied, “Well, what we know for now, of course, Ana, is why he's chosen that name, Leo XIV. Because every time a pope chooses a name of a previous pope, he wants to follow in the previous pope's footsteps. Now, Leo XIII was a pope at the end of the 19th century, in the beginning of the 20th century, who was really concerned about social justice, especially for workers at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when that affected really the rights of workers, but also it created jobs and it also made some old jobs disappear.”
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