My Left-wing Cartoons and Francisco

Pope Francis died in the wee hours of Easter Monday after having greeted Vice President Shady Vance and the throngs who came to celebrate the Resurrection with him the previous morning. I didn't get invited to the funeral at the Vatican today, so instead, I've got a look back over his papacy for this week's Graphical History Tour.

March, 2013

I caught a little bit of flack for this initial response to Cardinal Bergoglio’s election to the papacy in 2013, but I thought it was a light, whimsical cartoon to celebrate Catholicism’s first Latin American Pope. Besides, I happened to be discovering the music of Astor Piazolla just then. 

for Q Syndicate, August, 2013

Taking his papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, Bergoglio quickly showed himself to be a very, very different pope than Benedict XVI. The archconservative B-16, breaking with longstanding tradition, had resigned the papacy rather than linger in the position while cruel age slowly robbed him of mind and body. (As critical as I was of Pope Benedict, I credit him with a selfless decision many aging politicians would have done well to emulate.)

for Q Syndicate, September, 2013

Conservative Catholics in America, who had weaponized their faith to impose their beliefs on pro-choice and LGBTQ+ fellow citizens, came to be extremely disappointed in the new pontiff... 

for Q Syndicate January, 2014

...and eagerly searched for another.

Here I suggested that Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt, Catholic League professional umbrage taker Bill Donahue, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, anti-marriage troublemaker Maggie Gallagher, and Senator Rick Santorum would be happy to invest Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson with the scepter of St. Peter.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2015

Rowan County Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who worked her refusal to issue to issue same-sex couples marriage licenses into national fame, subsequently boasted of having a private audience with the Pope. It eventually came to light that her private audience was shared with dozens of other Vatican visitors, and was private only in the sense that she hadn't brought the right-wing media along.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2020

Pope Francis gave his blessing to "civil unions" rather than marriage equality for same-sex couples in the fall of 2020 (although some conservative Catholics disputed the translation in English-speaking media of the papal Latin "convivenia civil"). A majority of the Catholic majority on the McConnell Supreme Court have been itching to overturn the 2014 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling favoring marriage equality in this country.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2021

Franciscan liberality notwithstanding, Catholic orthodoxy continues to condemn homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered."

As with the Anglican, Methodist, fundamentalist, and other denominations, antigay animus is especially dominant among Catholic clergy in much of Africa. Pope Francis's dialogue in this next cartoon is a direct quote, somewhat edited between panels two and three:

February, 2024

Ninety bishops and cardinals published a letter strenuously objecting to that papal pronouncement. They will be speaking up loudly as their conclave meets to elect a successor to this modern-day Pope. 

Don't be surprised to see someone more in the mold of Benedict XVI... if not Innocent IV.

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When I scour newspapers and magazines from 100 years ago for these Graphical History Tours, I never come across Pope Pius XI in U.S. editorial cartoons. I suppose that Protestant cartoonists didn't pay much attention to what Pius XI had to say about anything, and any Catholic cartoonists never presumed to differ with him. He did issue encyclicals criticizing capitalistic greed and warning against socialism and communism.

After initially supporting fascism in his native Italy and in Germany, Pius XI would issue an encyclical in 1937, smuggled in to Nazi Germany, lashing out against violations of a concordat between the Nazi state and the Holy See. In Mit brennender Sorge, Pius condemned "pantheistic confusion," "neopaganism," and "the so-called myth of race and blood," which he called a form of idolatry.

I bring that up in regard to modern-day cartoonists such as Michael Ramirez, who apparently believe that papal pronouncements on current politics are something new with Pope Francis.

"You'll Have to Leave That Behind" by Michael Ramirez for Las Vegas Review Journal, April 21, 2025

Pius XI never stood up to Benito Mussolini, although he was scheduled to deliver an address on February 11, 1939 in which he was expected to denounce il Duce's laws aping Nazi Arianism. The Pope died on February 10, however, and Mussolini tried to have all 300 copies of the address destroyed.

Under the next Pope, Pius XII, the Roman Catholic Church turned a blind eye to the atrocities of Mussolini and Hitler. 

Today's Republican Party and its Amen Corner cartoonists, teledemagogues, and duck dynasts would most certainly have approved.