openDemocracy: How Pope Francis became a hate figure for the far right

Harnwell was introduced to Bannon by another American and former Brietbart contributor Austin Ruse, who runs a Catholic conservative lobby group called C-Fam that has been described as an anti-LGBT ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [...]

Analysis for SourceMaterial by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, which works to counter right-wing extremism, meanwhile shows that several suspected Twitter “bots” that once pumped out pro-Trump messages have in the past year switched to attack Francis. [...]

But he (as other critics do) appears to differentiate between Francis the spiritual leader and Francis the politician. In December 2018, he’d said the pope is “beneath contempt”. [...]

Like many of the pope’s American critics, he appears most preoccupied with the pontiff’s views on the free market – “an economy that kills,” according to a 2016 speech – and global warming, addressed in his climate change encyclical in 2015. [...]

It was around this time, in 2015, that Salvini began courting conservative religious voters with a new emphasis on “traditional” marriage. Previously, his Lega party had been avowedly secular and had even supported civil partnerships for same-sex couples.

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Reuters: Steve Bannon drafting curriculum for right-wing Catholic institute in Italy (SEPTEMBER 14, 2018)

Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute based in a mountaintop monastery not far from Rome, told Reuters Bannon had been helping to build up the institute for about half of its eight-year life.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading Vatican conservative who is president of the Institute’s board of advisers, said Bannon would be playing a leading role there.[...]

Bannon’s increased engagement with the Institute demonstrates how his involvement in Europe extends beyond electoral politics to an effort to build a populist faction inside the Catholic Church.[...]

Harnwell said he founded the institute while working as an aide to a British Conservative European Parliament member. At the time, one of the legislature’s committees was trying to block Rocco Buttiglione, a confidant of Pope John Paul II, from becoming European Commissioner for justice and security.

During a confirmation hearing, Buttiglione, who was nominated to the European Commission by then-Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, described homosexuality as a sin and said the principal role of women was to have children. Amid political uproar, Buttiglione withdrew from consideration for the Commission.

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