Is Pope Francis good comic material? If you consider yourself a devoted Catholic, the line can be blurry.
I’ve written several times in recent years about popular comic-actor-writer Jim Gaffigan, who has used his Catholicism as successful fodder. He built an entire TV show around having five kids and what it’s like to be religious in the entertainment business. He doesn’t swear on stage.
Yet jesting about the spiritual leader of the world’s biggest Christian church himself — when you’re an adherent, with a “super devout-Catholic mother in law” — feels like tricky territory. Gaffigan lived this 2 1/2 years ago when he performed on stage as a kind of opening act for Pope Francis in Philadelphia, during the pope’s 2015 U.