From the New York Times:
It looks as if Bernie Sanders’s brief Roman holiday will not include a meeting with Pope Francis.
In a routine briefing with reporters in the Vatican press office on Thursday, the spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, was asked if the pope would meet with academics and politicians, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who are participating in a Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences conference on Friday.
“There won’t be a meeting with the Holy Father,” Father Lombardi said.
Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark.
So is the next paragraph:
A papal encounter was always going to be a long shot for Mr. Sanders, whose trip is not on an official visit to the Holy See. The politician was never scheduled to have an audience with Pope Francis, and the conference is not exactly the “high-level meeting” that the Sanders campaign billed it as in its news release about the trip. But as recently as Wednesday, Mr. Sanders was still hopeful for a face-to-face with the pontiff.
The Times still holds out a bit of hope, saying Pope Francis “has proved his unpredictability time and time again” and “sometimes can’t resist” getting involved in other country’s politics, but this door seems pretty darned closed.
Face it folks, this was a real Hail Mary, but it turns out Weaver isn’t Doug Flutie, and Devine isn’t Gerard Phelan.