No Sunlight Here

Change Is Not Coming: Pope Francis’ Meeting With Kim Davis Signals That ‘Culture Wars’ Are Still Raging:

Pope Francis secretly met with Kim Davis last Thursday in Washington D.C., according to The New York Times.

The Rev. Frederico Lombardi “confirmed the meeting, but declined to elaborate on it. He said he ‘did not deny that the meeting took place, but I have no other comments to add,’” the Times reported. Lombardi also confirmed the meeting to Buzzfeed News.

This is all really weird and smells funny to me. If this all happened, then why the secrecy from the Vatican. Do they simply cover things up out of habit? (You decide if the pun is intended or not.)

My initial reaction to all of this is that it is simply not true, even if Rev. Frederico Lombardi says that it is. I guess time will tell.

ThinkProgress shares my skepticism:

The only other source of information about the alleged meeting is Kim Davis’ lawyers, and they don’t have the best track record.

After Moynihan’s first report, Davis’ attorneys at the Liberty Counsel have provided all of the other information about what may have happened. They issued their own press release, which contained no new information except another comment from Davis and a comment from Mat Staver, chairman and spokesperson for the anti-gay hate group. Staver has since given interviews to CBS News and the New York Times. Davis recounted her experience in an ABC News interview but offered no new details, making Staver the only source of information about the meeting, even though he wasn’t present for it.

The announcement that Davis had met with Pope Francis came mere hours after the Liberty Counsel had to admit that their claim of a massive prayer rally for her in Peru was fabricated. They tried to pin the mistake on Peruvian Congressman Julio Rosas, who allegedly provided them with the photographic evidence — a photo of a convention that took place back in May of 2014. On Tuesday, Rosas explained in an interview with Perú21 that “we always pray in our homes for other Christians,” but he denied any account of a stadium rally for Davis. Thus, there remains a question of where exactly the Liberty Counsel got the idea that the picture was a rally for Davis — a point they adamantly defended at first — severely undermining how trustworthy the organization’s claims might be.

Staver’s additional details about the logistics of the Davis’ visit to the Vatican embassy are, as such, similarly tenuous. He claims that the couple rode to the embassy in a black SUV, and that Kim “made her hair up in a different way” so that it would not be the recognizable style from her mugshot. Though Liberty Counsel was eager to report that the meeting had happened immediately, “we wanted to keep that quiet to respect the Pope’s broader message because we didn’t want the Pope’s visit to be overshadowed with Kim Davis.” Apparently the meeting was scheduled “days in advance” and “was confirmed the evening before and the morning of.” Though he says Davis would have happily traveled to D.C. to meet with Pope Francis, “it was just happenstance” that she was already in town for the Values Voter Summit, where the Family Research Council honored her with a “Cost of Discipleship Award.”

I wonder if Pope Francis knows anything about Mat Staver and Liberty Counsel? Does he know that they are basically a hate group that judges gay people?