As Pope Francis prepares to venture into the belly of the American political beast – he gives a talk to Congress in September – his words and image have found their way into a new political ad.
The 53-second Spanish-language ad produced by the liberal super PAC American Bridge takes aim at Charles and David Koch, the libertarian businessmen and philanthropists, and their opposition to policies aimed at curbing climate change.
The spot claims that the Kochs “have bought the Republican Party and now they are trying to intimidate the Pope.” It points out that most Hispanics want the federal government to take action on climate change, and then cuts to a clip of a news report about Pope Francis.
“Pope Francis is about to face climate change as a moral urgent imperative,” a voiceover says in Spanish, while images of the pope meeting with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon are flashed across the screen.
The ad notes that the Koch brothers plan to spend a staggering $900 million through the 2016 elections, and ties their investment to climate change issues. It shows speakers condemning the Vatican’s involvement in the climate change debate, standing behind a banner from the Heartland Institute.
But a spokesman for the Heartland Institute rejected the premise of the ad, telling Crux that the Chicago-based organization hasn’t received any money from a Koch-affiliated organization since 2011, when it was awarded $25,000 for a healthcare project. The recent Heartland-sponsored meeting in Rome was not financed by Koch money, the spokesman said, and the Heartland Institute does not disclose its donors.
Christopher Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said the ad packs a double punch for its Hispanic audience. He noted that most Hispanics in the United States are Catholic and thus more attuned to the pope’s claim that climate change is a moral issue. And there’s also a cultural issue at play.
“You’ve got a reformist pope from Argentina being criticized by a bunch of wealthy white people,” he said.
Galdieri said it’s unlikely that Francis’ image will be used for mainstream ads, because even with his popularity, “popes just don’t fit into political boxes as we tend to think about them” in the United States.
Plus, he said, Pope Benedict XVI said similar things about the climate — as well as economics and inequality — but was seen as more conservative than Francis, even if the two also share views on marriage and abortion. That makes it unlikely Francis will become a star in liberal ads in the run-up to the 2016 election.
But when it comes to climate change, liberals seem to have a strong ally in Pope Francis. He’ll release a papal encyclical on the environment next month, and he’s expected to urge the world to act on climate change during a speech to the United Nations in September. Although he hasn’t released a single word of the encyclical, the anticipation about what Pope Francis might say has sharply divided American Catholics.
Earlier this month, one of the pope’s top advisors, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, said he was shocked at the level of opposition to the pope’s encyclical in the United States.
“I have already heard criticism over the encyclical,” Rodríguez said after a visit to the United States, calling it “absurd” since the document has yet to be published.
Update: The story has been updated with comments from the Heartland Institute.
