The Pope & Kim Davis: Another Religious Fiction

Kim Davis, the religious extremist Kentucky County clerk who tried to martyr herself by going to jail for five days after contemptuously refusing to obey a federal judge who had ordered her office to issue marriage licenses to gays, now claims that she had a private audience with Pope Frances at his request while he was visiting the U.S. last week.

She and her lawyer, Mat Staver, insist that she and her husband were invited by, and met with the Holy Father at the Vatican embassy in Washington whereupon he urged her in regard to the ordeal between her conscience and the law to “stay strong.”

“I’m just a nobody… It was really humbling to think he would want to meet or know me… Just knowing that the pope is on track with what we're doing and agreeing, you know, it kind of validates everything," Davis gushed. Attorney Staver claims that the Vatican initiated the meeting as an affirmation of her right to be a conscientious objector.

Sounds pretty impressive right? The Pontiff is interested in poor little nobody, Kim Davis, and her religious liberty cause against homosexuals. That’s why he invited her to Washington for a private audience so that he could encourage her not to give up; to stay strong as it were.

There’s one big problem though:  It didn’t happen. It’s a fraud; just another religious fiction in the mind of Kim Davis and her attorney. By his own admission, Staver was not even present at the encounter. This is the same attorney who was forced to admit last week that a photo he presented at the Values Voters Summit, which he claimed showed a 100,000-person prayer rally to support Davis in Peru, was taken in 2014 and did not, in fact, have anything to do with Davis.

After Vatican officials and Pope Frances learned of Davis and her attorney’s bogus claims, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi released an extraordinary statement, personally approved by Pope Francis himself, debunking nearly everything she said.

The Pope isn’t interested in her case; he didn’t invite her to Washington; there was no private audience with him; and he expressed no encouragement to her whatever. As it turns out, Davis was merely one of “several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet [Pope Francis] as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City,” said Lombardi. In short, Davis was allowed to greet and shake the Pope’s hand; no more. 

Lombardi adds that, on that occasion, “the only real audience” — private meeting— “granted by the Pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.” That student, Yayo Grassi just happens to be an openly gay man who brought along his partner of 19 years. “Three weeks before the trip, [Pope Francis] called me on the phone and said he would love to give me a hug,” says Grassi.

“The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects… Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness.”

So much for Kim Davis & the Pope: Another religious fiction.