After Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced Friday morning that he will attend a conference on social, economic, and environmental issues at the Vatican next week, an official at the academy said that the Democratic presidential candidate showed “discourtesy” by attending the event.
While the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences told Bloomberg News that he invited Sanders to speak, the president of the academy said that all invitations to the conference had to come through her.
Margaret Archer, the president of the academy, told Bloomberg News that Sanders did not notify her that he was attending and that his presence would make the conference political.
“The president of the academy organizing this event has not been contacted with monumental discourtesy,” she told Bloomberg News.
She also suggested that he is attending the conference in an attempt to win the Catholic vote.
“Sanders made the first move, for the obvious reasons,” she told Bloomberg News. “I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly — not that he will.”
“His use of it is clearly a pretext. There are just 20 academics and there will be nothing of policy relevance,” Archer added.
The Sanders campaign told Bloomberg that Archer’s description of Sanders’ actions is “categorically untrue.”
“The invitation came to the senator from the Vatican,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said.
And the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences’ chancellor, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, told Bloomberg News that he invited Sanders to the conference “quite some time ago.”
“We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America,” he said.
A spokesman for Pope Francis also clarified in a Friday statement that the pope himself did not invite Sanders to attend the conference and that the two were not currently scheduled to meet, according to Bloomberg News.
In his Friday morning announcement, Sanders said he was “delighted” to speak at the conference at the Vatican.
“Pope Francis has made clear that we must overcome ‘the globalization of indifference’ in order to reduce economic inequalities, stop financial corruption and protect the natural environment. That is our challenge in the United States and in the world,” he said.
Bernie is showboating again.
He was invited. Is it showboating when you’re invited?
He arranged the invitation, and it didn’t come from the person in charge of inviting participants.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-08/sanders-accused-of-discourtesy-in-seeking-vatican-invitation
Needs to check in with her bosses before she lobs personal insults at visiting dignitaries. She just made herself look like an asshole and completely contradicted the Church officials who did invite him.
I’m not a Sanders booster by any means, but I really don’t see where he did anything wrong here. He was invited to attend and he accepted the invitation. It is true that his attendance probably politicizes the event, but that’s not his fault, it’s the fault, if any, of the person who invited him.