One Unexpected Side Benefit of the Papal Visit…

…is that we have gone for the whole week so far without hearing the name “Donald Trump”. Already, he seems like a fading nightmare in the clear light of day. It’s hard to believe he ever existed. And rhetoric like this just seems like a joke out of comedy:

You read it with a sense of detached bemusement and it is so delightfully empty of anything but comic value that it’s hard to believe anybody ever took the guy seriously.

I used to have a priest who, when he encountered somebody he could not bring himself to see with charity, would pretend they were a character from Dickens, “and that made it alright.”

This feels like that.  Somehow, Francis has helped me to see Trump as a character out of Dickens and enjoy him.  Thanks, Papa!