Vermont senator hopes to align campaign with issues Pope Francis has raised in what seems to be a gamble for a candidate who rarely speaks about religion

Bernie Sanders plans to warn against “the idolatry of money” in a speech at the Vatican next week which the Democratic candidate hopes will align his insurgent presidential campaign with the moral preaching of Pope Francis.



“What the pope has been clear about is linking the issue of morality with the global economy and making the point that you can’t have a moral economy when so many people are living in poverty,” Sanders told the Guardian.

“He has raised the issue more than any other person on the planet and I am very proud to be with him in the Vatican,” he added in an interview shortly after the campaign announced his surprise attendance at the conference on 15 April.

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Taking place just four days before a crucial showdown against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the New York primary election, the trip is a gamble for Sanders, who speaks little about religion on the campaign trail and would be the first Jewish president if elected.

The Vermont senator conceded it had “not yet been determined” if he will have a private audience with the pope during attendance at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on social, economic and environmental issues.

A Vatican source also confirmed they would “not necessarily” be meeting privately. “It could happen, but very well could not,” the source told the Guardian on Friday.

The pope is usually reluctant to be seen as endorsing candidates or getting involved in national politics, but he caused a stir during his recent trip the US, when he called on Congress to tackle climate change and embrace immigration.

Sanders believes the pope’s unusually political visit in September helped lend legitimacy to his own message of “democratic socialism”, which he argues is much more in tune with the tradition of American political reformers like Franklin Roosevelt than is often appreciated.

The senator said he plans to talk “about the idolatry of money and the dangers to our culture of being seduced by the worship of money” during his visit to the Vatican on Friday.

He also said the evidence of offshore banking activity revealed by the Guardian and other news outlets this week in the Panama Papers underlined why it was important to reintroduce morality into financial regulation.

“It is not going to be a very long trip, I plan to be back on Saturday,” he added when asked if it would interfere with his campaign schedule in New York.

Sanders had been in fraught discussions with Clinton over the date of a televised debate between the two, which is scheduled the night before he leaves for Rome, and hastily added two rallies in his home borough of Brooklyn on Friday amid signs of he is closing a large gap between the two in opinion polls.

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But he has been under fire in New York, in particular, for what many see as radical plans to break up large banks and rein in Wall Street excesses he claims have not yet been properly regulated.

According to the organisers in Rome, Sanders will be joined at the conference by the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, the socialist former leader of a coca-growers union who was the first president to come from the country’s indigenous majority, the Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, and professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in New York.



Attendance at Vatican conferences of this sort is not unusual for US politicians. New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio and other US mayors were at an environment conference last year. The announcement is also likely to be heavily overshadowed by the Vatican’s latest controversial publication on Friday on family issues, which did not go as far on the issue of gay rights as some Catholic Democrats would have liked.

In a statement, the Sanders campaign said his “high-level meeting will take place on … the 25th anniversary of an important encyclical of Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, which called for an economy of dignity, social justice and environmental sustainability”.

“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,” it added. “That is our challenge in the United States and in the world.”

Though criticised by some Jewish leaders for not speaking much about his own background or faith, Sanders has given two speeches – in a church in Washington just before the pope arrived, and to evangelical Christians at Liberty University in Virginia – in which he outlined his belief in the moral necessity of social justice.

Additional reporting by Stephanie Kirchgaessner