Talk about bad timing.

Pope Francis was pictured whooping it up with radical left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore in big-publicity photos taken outside the Vatican.  The two pressed flesh and laughed and whispered and clearly enjoyed each other's company.

Here's the Daily Mail report:

Hollywood director Michael Moore has been pictured meeting Pope Francis outside the Vatican after jetting in to promote his new documentary on Donald Trump.

Moore, who rose to fame as the director of harrowing documentary Bowling for Columbine, was pictured warmly shaking hands with the pontiff on Wednesday afternoon.

Pictures showed Moore taking snaps on his phone and waiting in line to meet the Pope as he greeted adoring members of the public.

The director has previously demonstrated a love-hate relationship with the Church, throwing shade at Pope Francis on social media for some of his teachings.

Sound like a good thing, in the wake of the recent Church scandals – which are intimately connected to a left-wing lavender mafia protection racket?  Don't think so.

More to the point, does it sound like a good thing, given Moore's reflexive opposition to everything the Church stands for, as well as his appalling record as a hypocrite, given that the filmmaker-of-the-people was last seen stiffing the help?  Sure, some Catholics can say Jesus entertained sinners, but the analogy falls flat because Moore doesn't consider himself a sinner.  This is more like Jesus whooping it up with the know-it-all Pharisees and saying hey, maybe the Pharisees had a point.

That said, when you read the facts of the matter, it's pretty obvious that it was the washed up Moore who was using the washed up pope for his own publicity purposes, not the other way around.  Moore's out promoting a left-wing anti-Trump movie, and what better way than to be seen pictured with the pontiff who's criticized Trump, as if he's got some impressive Vatican connections?  This kind of thing can excite lefties and disgust ordinary Catholics, who have no such access to that kind of power and who don't want to see the pope promoting this anti-Catholic bounder anyway.

It really was publicity for Moore: he was the one who tweeted the pictures all over the place.  Meanwhile, his whisperings to the pope in the pictures could only have been minimal conversation, given that Moore doesn't speak Spanish and the pope speaks virtually no English, although he says in his tweet that he's going to write about it.  Color me skeptical – what he's going to do is use those pictures as a marketing tool.

Today I met Pope Francis for the first time at the weekly general audience he holds at the Vatican. We spoke for a number of minutes. I had a question I wanted to ask him and he gave me his answer. I will write about this tomorrow. For tonight, I remain deeply moved and grateful. pic.twitter.com/rWL9zRBnjj

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 18, 2018

The pope, actually, didn't have all that much control over the scene, so he seems to be less culpable than Moore, but he might have had some.  It's significant that Moore was pictured with Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the line for the papal audience and in the pictures, too, because it's quite possible he used her as his "beard" to keep himself from getting thrown out of the line by Vatican bouncers.  After all, who would throw her out?  And if she's with him, he comes with the package.

But on the other hand, when has the pope ever been pictured with a conservative, let alone whooping it up with one?  He hasn't.  And that raises the issue of the cronyism of the left brotherhood being the story here, not the pope being a pastoral minister to all.  At a minimum, he might have maintained a distance from such an ogre. 

So Moore saw his chance to get his picture in the news with a leader whose church he hates and with it some publicity for his film, and the pope didn't stand in his way.

Color me disgusted.