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“There are huge areas where we and the pope do overlap, and as a loyal Catholic, I don’t want to spend my life fighting against the pope on issues where I won’t change his mind,” Harnwell said over a lunch of cannelloni. “Far more valuable for me would be spend time working constructively with Steve Bannon.”

He made it clear he was speaking for himself, not for the Institute for Human Dignity, a conservative Catholic group that he founded, and insisted that he shared the pope’s goals of ensuring peace and ending poverty, just not his ideas on how to achieve it.

Bannon publicly articulated his worldview in remarks a few months after his meeting with Burke, at a Vatican conference organized by Harnwell’s institute.

Speaking via video feed from Los Angeles, Bannon, a Catholic, held forth against rampant secularization, the existential threat of Islam, and a capitalism that had drifted from the moral foundations of Christianity.

That talk has garnered much attention, and approval by conservatives, for its explicit expression of Bannon’s vision. Less widely known are his efforts to cultivate strategic alliances with those in Rome who share his interpretation of a right-wing “church militant” theology.

Bannon’s visage, speeches and endorsement of Harnwell as “the smartest guy in Rome” are featured heavily on the website of Harnwell’s foundation. Trump’s senior adviser has maintained email contact with Burke, according to Harnwell, who dropped by the cardinal’s residence after lunch. And another person with knowledge of Bannon’s outreach said the White House official is personally calling his contacts in Rome for thoughts on who should be the Trump administration’s ambassador to the Holy See.