Pope Francis Aspired to the Teachings of Jesus. Of Course, MAGAs are Celebrating His Death.

Pope Francis had barely been dead for twelve hours when Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene took to social media for a bizarre celebration of his passing.

Alleging some asinine insider info on the will and the work of God, she posted:

Now, in any normal period in America’s history, under any normal Administration, and from any other normal American politician, this kind of sickening dance atop a spiritual leader’s grave would be beyond credulity.

Unfortunately, nothing about this moment, this Administration, or this Republican Party is within a thousand miles of normal. In fact, what’s so stomach-turning is how on brand for MAGA these comments are. Their Christianity has no interest in or room for Jesus.

Now, let’s put aside the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene is about as much a Christian as Katy Perry is an astronaut, and let’s table the fact that right now, she should be in prison or a mental healthcare facility instead of Congress.

But is it any surprise that she and the rest of Trump’s Christian Cosplay death cult despised Pope Francis?

By devoting his life to the teachings of Jesus, he was the antithesis of MAGA Christianity.

From the very beginning when he arrived, it was clear that Francis wasn’t going to be your grandfather’s Pope:

He would shun much of the ceremonial pageantry and showy opulence of the past, choosing to dress and travel simply, often abandoning the papal limousine for a bus alongside cardinals, and designating a Ford Focus as his regular vehicle.

He would challenge those in Church leadership to seek humbler, quieter ways of living; ways that considered and respected the countless who live with so much less.

Like Jesus, he often hosted meals for the poor, once saying to a group gathered in Assisi, “Many of you have been stripped by this savage world. It does not give employment, and it does not care if there are children dying of hunger."

Emulating the humility and compassion of Jesus, Francis often washed people’s feet, once for female inmates in a prison in Rome—a scandalous act to the usual rule-makers and power-holders.

And the Pope understood the desperation of migrants, responding in the wake of a ship’s capsizing off the island of Lampedusa, “The world did not care about those fleeing poverty and hunger, who seek freedom but instead find death".

Pope Francis continually reflected Christ’s heart for those living in poverty, once saying, “We need to let ourselves be evangelized by the poor. They have much to teach us.”

While far from a perfect human being, and certainly not without flaws and failings as a leader (for example, in matters of LGBTQ rights where he affirmed same-sex unions but not marriages, and in fully protecting victims of sexual abuse and bringing full accountability to their assailants) Pope Francis always seemed to be pushing himself to the deeper places of faith, continually challenging old assumptions; pulling the Church into places of greater understanding and growth—pushback and confrontation be damned.

And his humility, his introspection, his care for the suffering, and his boldness in the face of the very power structure sustaining him, he is everything Trump Christians are not.

Unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Franklin Graham, and a thousand other MAGA self-identified Christians whose sermons and testimonies always come submerged in cruelty, when Pope Francis talked about his faith, it always sounded like good news to the poor, the hungry, the unloved, the overlooked.

As he lived and led, Pope Francis resembled Jesus in his joyful countenance, his continual expanding of the table, and his willingness to encounter turbulence on behalf of the vulnerable. The same cannot be said for the lion’s share of Evangelical leaders, whose spiritual legacy is a mean-spirited, exclusionary, judgmental, politicized, power-hungry religion of compulsion.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, much like her felon-rapist Messiah-in-Chief, has never had a noble impulse in her life, never made an effort to care for the poor, bring healing to the sick, protect the vulnerable, or welcome the stranger.

Which is why she and so many in Trump’s Evangelical orbit are rejoicing right now: because the fewer people here who actually give half a damn about the compassion, kindness, and generosity of Jesus’ teachings—the easier it will be for them to further drive the Church to become the very bloated, loveless, violent table that Jesus would have come to turn over.

Now, we can and should argue whether he achieved it or not, but Pope Francis genuinely seemed to aspire to a life of Christlikeness. That is something that Marjorie Taylor Greene and the MAGAchurch simply will not and cannot tolerate.

The last thing MAGA Christians want is more Jesus.