President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board is asking Pope Francis for meetings with him and other high-level Vatican officials to discuss “efforts to divide evangelicals and Catholics.”
The request comes a few weeks after two of Francis’ closest allies published a critical article about the shared political activism of conservative evangelicals and Catholics, saying it has “an ideology of conquest.”
The piece attracted wide attention because of the connection that the authors — an Italian Catholic priest and an Argentine Presbyterian pastor — have to the pope and because of its range: It disparaged everything from conservative evangelicalism and prosperity gospel to the popular idea that the United States is blessed by God.